For UNBC president, surprise budget cut was final blow
British Columbians are lucky to only lose one uni president
Dr. Don Cozzetto, president of the University of Northern British Columbia, resigned earlier this week not even half way through his five-year term. He sold his house and skipped Prince George before we at Maclean’s – or anyone else, for that matter – could ask him about the surprise departure.
But according to a Vancouver Sun interview with UNBC board of directors chair Don Rix, Cozzetto’s main reason for quitting was that he got tired of being a scapegoat for government cuts to expected funding. “It’s pretty hard if you’re the front man to go around and say, ‘I’m sorry you are going to need to lay off two people, or we won’t be able to fix your lab this year even though it’s been on the list for five years,’” Rix told the Sun.
Considering that Cozzetto had been battling a budget deficit since he took the helm in 2006, you can’t blame the man for being disheartened when the B.C. Liberal government handed him another financial burden: surprise funding cuts, mere weeks before the April 1 start of the fiscal year.
On March 12, B.C. universities and colleges were given a nasty surprise when Advanced Education Minister Murray Coell announced they would receive millions less than expected. The 2.6 per cent cut across the board is estimated to represent as much as $60 million in total. Institutions have been scrambling since to figure out exactly how the cuts will affect their specific funding and how to absorb the shortfall into their budget — budgets that in many cases have been planned for months and recently finalized.
British Columbians may be lucky that they only lost one university president over the debacle. University of British Columbia president Dr. Stephen Toope expressed resigned frustration in a statement shortly after the cuts were announced. “The government’s budget decision is especially challenging as it comes on the heels of tremendous effort made on the Vancouver Campus to deal with a large structural deficit,” he said.
Now this week, almost three months after the government’s announcement, the B.C. Ministry of Advanced Education finally issued their “Letters of Expectations” addressed to the individual institutions. The letters outline, in no uncertain terms, what the province expects the schools to deliver.
Vancouver Sun columnist Vaughn Palmer noted that the letters lead off with a friendly tone, but “even a cursory read discloses that there is nothing cooperative about the Liberal approach,” Vaughn wrote in Wednesday’s paper. “These are marching orders, and belated ones at that.”
Belated is right. On the first page of each agreement is the term: from April 1, 2008 to March 31, 2009. And yet, Coell’s signature is dated May 30 and the letters were only posted online this week. So, basically, the government is instructing the universities how to implement the surprise cuts two months into the fiscal year. And they are serious about the expectations: “Persistent and substantial failure to achieve targets and complete deliverables may result in more formal action being taken,” the documents read.
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[...] BC’s Permanent Tax On Everything apparently doesn’t pay for universities By Paul Wells | Email | June 18th, 2008 at 1:53 pm Posted to: Inkless Wells | 0 | Comment on post Filed Under: Inkless Wells Tags: BC • Gordon Campbell • PSE I was wondering what’s up with Gordon Campbell’s really weird management of the higher-education file, which is turning into a bit of a spiralling helldive of disaster, when it occurred to me to consult Maclean’s on campus. Sure enough, no surprise, Erin Millar has the news, and it’s seriously not good. [...]
The President of UBC should try to determine if there are areas where his university could improve. Unless I am mistaken, and my nose does not hunt the trail of policy as it was wont to do, one reason that our wise king, the Premier of Lotus Land, may have created more “universities” was to allow for some healthy competition.
If you search very hard, you will find a certain letter to The Ubyssey, my favorite student paper next to Harvard’s Crimson, about the problems at the UBC faculty of education. I have not noted that the President has set out clear plans for yearly public reviews of that faculty over the next four years, at least, to try to get it reoriented.
LLED is having obvious struggles. The head, when I spoke with him, did not even know what was being taught in the courses in his own department. I found teaching of trash “grammar” books by Azar. I did not find careful integration of COBUILD grammars and Oxford dictionaries. LLED decided not to respond to my detailed written concerns.
UBC has had a long-term problem teaching about the Internet. In MIS in Sauder, it used to be the routine that students would take second- rate courses about the Internet, fail even to learn how to design websites with JavaScript and Flash and by reverse engineering sites, and then after graduation would have to trek down to BCIT to take some practical courses. No doubt that has changed.
UBC is contaminating the landscape with the LPI, perhaps the most absurdest English test in the world. Many, many students, and not only Asian second-language students, are complaining about this stupid test, which has nothing to do with their academic programs. The response of the AMS in the past, alas, has often been to look in the other direction.
The UBC English department has a bad habit of teaching school rhetoric, the thesis statement, and all such, to first-year students. Haven’t they heard? The dodo is dead. So is school rhetoric.
What was the role of UBC law faculty, direct or indirect, in the Air-India prosecution farce and aftermath? Has President Toope ordered the end of LSAT at UBC and started putting together an imaginative curriculum for a sound law school admission test?
What about environmental assessments for the South Campus developments? Is what is on the Internet all we will ever get?
Leadership is a subtle quality. Does President Toope have what it takes? So far, his performance has been curious. He may have some good points to make about the Province and the Ministry. I wonder why the Ministry did not move to get rid of section 48 of the University Act, Minister not to interfere, before setting out on its road to reform. But, in fact, UBC is a public university with some nasty private habits.
You can’t bury important facts forever, even if it is virtually official university policy to do so.
[...] University of Northern British Columbia president Don Cozzetto’s suddenly resigned last month – in large part due to university funding cuts by the provincial government – there was [...]
And his resignation had nothing to do with his extreme unpopularity with faculty and staff at UNBC?
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[...] cutbacks were a major factor in the president of the University of Northern British Columbia decision to resign [...]