Students protest closure of Montreal college after provincial permit suspension

A group of students protested outside the Collège Supérieur de Montreal private school on Sunday.

Students gathered Sunday in front of a private college in Montreal to protest its closure after its permit was not renewed by the Quebec government.

The protesters, which included international students, say they were left in limbo when their schools announced their closure a little over a week ago.

The Collège supérieur de Montréal is among four private colleges in the province that saw their permit suspended in recent weeks, alongside the Collège supérieur de Sherbrooke, the Collège Herzing, and the Collège de technologie Véritas.

Some students were weeks away from graduation when they learned they would not be able to complete their studies as planned. That was the case of Ouazar Ghenima, an international student from Algeria studying at the Collège supérieur de Montréal.

She only had one exam and an internship to complete before finishing her program to become a medical secretary.

“We were all in shock, all of a sudden,” she said before the protest.

“We had made projects thinking we were almost done, that everything was fine, that we were going to move on to the next step ... and now, we’re just waiting. We don’t know what to do.”

In the days after the closure was announced, the Quebec education ministry reached out to students to offer them alternative means of completing their studies.

But for Ghenima, those solutions did not pan out. She said she reached out to a few schools, but with the summer holiday, she either did not hear back or was told she would be able to enroll halfway through the fall.

Her immigration status in Quebec is tied to her school, and her study permit is set to expire at the end of August.

Ghenima said she considers herself lucky, as she was completing her second diploma at the college and could apply to work in Quebec with her previous studies. Some of her peers who were set to obtain their first diploma this summer do not have that option.

The Quebec education ministry did not provide details on why it had not renewed the permits.

The immigration ministry confirmed that international students will need to submit a new request in order to keep their status, but said the processing of their request would be adapted to the situation.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 19, 2026.

Marieke Glorieux-Stryckman, The Canadian Press