For UNBC president, surprise budget cut was final blow
British Columbians are lucky to only lose one uni president
The government’s late issued directives imply that reorganizing a university budget should be as easy as rejigging a campus frat party. “Hey guys!” an undergrad might say two hours into the party. “We don’t have as much beer in the keg as we thought, so slow it down!”
It should be that easy—right? It’s not as if student applications have already been accepted, student loans applied for, professors and staff hired, and programs planned. There’s more than two months to go before those new undergrads file into the classroom—lots of time to reduce their seats.
In reality, cutting the money – as much as $17.4 million at UBC alone – from already-set budgets has been tough. For instance, in an April 3 release Vancouver Community College proposed to reduce almost 400 student seats, layoff 16 employees, and suspend a number of programs. Cindy Oliver, president of the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators, estimated that 80 faculty and 1,000 student positions were cut in the end. But even with those cuts, VCC is facing a deficit, something this week’s letter of expectations bans without the ministry’s approval.
In addition to barring institutions from running deficits, the letters lay out which programs they cannot touch, even though the colleges and universities have been working for three months to sort out their budgets. Schools are prohibited from reducing programs for people with disabilities and “vulnerable people in our communities,” and a variety of subjects, from health to skilled trades, are protected.
All this, two months into the fiscal year.
Let’s take a moment to recognize one of the smarter changes the Campbell Liberal government has done in post-secondary education during their two terms of rule: three-year budgeting. When they began projecting funding for universities and colleges three years in advance, they stated that the predictability would allow institutions to plan long-term. Sigh.
Let’s hope other university presidents don’t take Cozzetto’s cue and leave for greener – or at least, more predictable – pastures.
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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.
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And his resignation had nothing to do with his extreme unpopularity with faculty and staff at UNBC?
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