Perhaps someone can explain the number of
3989 Students.

I presume this number represents both full time and part time students. What I dont know is if this is the full time equivilant number that is used for fuding purposes.

The Research University Council reported statistics for UNBC for full time and part time graduate and undergraduate students for 2006, 2007 for Nov 1st as follows;

5/06 3561
6/07 3672

It would appear that you would have to use the FTE formula on the number 3989 to get the actual number of students registered. I assume that this would be somewhere in the area of 3774 students for 2008 and therefore we are looking at an increase of approx 102 students, because if you just use the number 3989 versus 2007 number 3672 you would be looking at an increase of 8.6%.

Perhaps Nowicki can figure it out, I sure cant.

You would think that they would just give us a simple number. Ie; UNBC enrolments increased by 102 FTE students for year 2008 over 2007 would be sufficient.

I cant help you on this Pal I'm just to old to do the math. But would it be because we have a down turn in the economy and many have to retrain for other types of employment that the enrollment is up at UNBC.

Does that help you Pal?

cheers

I doubt that a count shown as "5/06" is a count for November 1st. That would be the factored count for the year.

UNBC actaully has 3 semesters when enrollment counts are taken - fall, spring, summer. That is also the order of highest to lowest enrollment semesters.

The counts you are looking at are FTE counts as opposed to head counts.

Here is in interesting articel for all those of you who follow demographics in order to project future university enrolment. Demographics are an indicator, but not the primary indicator. The primary indicator is the shift in the type of jobs which people feel they wish to have access to and the type of education required to get access to those jobs.

From last year:
http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=20070501_162931_5440

The number 3989 is the total of part time, full time, graduate, undergraduate and non-gratuate students. The government until recently only funded the full time [FTE] undergarduates and has started funding
full time graduates which has helped UNBC in its budget.

UNBC's administration is fully aware of these facts and the fact that it is missing its FTE targets by around 9% according to the latest accountability framework report, which puts UNBC FTE numbers to almost 3000. Around 300 short of UNBC target.

As I wrote in another piece almost 50% of the shortfall in UNBC FTE enrolments [i.e. around 150 out of 300] is due to the UNBC missing its targeted seats for undergraduates in Computer Science, electrical computer engineering and related DTO programs, that is DTO [Doubling The Opportunities] seats. For example, if UNBC did not have Computer Science [CS], then UNBC would be less than 4% of its target FTE instead of present 9% [*assuming* that BC government agrees to subtract the 246 DTO FTEs from UNBC FTE targets]. Jago now wishes that he has turned down the DTO money in 2001 by BC government and instead has closed the Computer Sc program.

So one solution going around in UNBC has been the total closure of UNBC Computer Science which is dragging UNBC FTE numbers down and help UNBC FTE numbers, hoping that those enroling in Computer program enrole in other programs in UNBC and bring UNBC FTEs much closer to its FTE target, if gov readjusts UNBC FTEs by 246 and forgets about all DTO funding goals [after some wink wink ... between Jago and Bond and Campbell].

You may have been surprised that Computer Science was not listed in programs eligible for buyout and reduction for its faculties. But UNBC has already started cutting the number of Computer Science faculty by 30%-40% and this could be the preparations for its closure considering that 20% of remaining faculty there were in retirement age, according to old rules.

There have been some fierce internal politics and discrimination going on in UNBC Computer Science since separating from Math program and it is currently headed by an acting chair Dr Deborah Poff who does not belong to Computer Science [according to its web cite] and Poff is the faculty association's grievance officer.

Do you want to read the DTO story in UNBC?
Search for DTO and UNBC on google. I would have posted it, but the trolls here will make too much noise.

Concerning the other parts of the article about UNBC endowment and to forsee the extent of upcoming storm and "reason to celebrate"[?], read the following recent report "Canadian universities may curtail hiring, scholarships: Losses in endowment and pension funds from economic slide put pressure on universities". Here is the link:

http://www.universityaffairs.ca/2008/12/01/schools-may-curtail-hiring-scholarships.aspx

Re-training is becoming a MAJOR issue with the way the economy is going, and the rise in unemployment.
Some jobs are not coming back I'm sure.
Colleges and universities are bound to see an enrolment increase I would think?
I just hope that our government in all it's wisdom doesn't shut down the re-training funding for the sake of saving some bucks!
Hopefully some people will come through these programs in better shape as far as marketable skills are concerned than they were went they went in.
If nothing else,it might also give some hope for the future to those that have had the rug yanked out from underneath them.

If nothing else,it might also give some hope for the future to those that have had the rug yanked out from underneath them.

It is unfortunate that that our politicians dont seem to understand that an education for the younger generation is the secret that would solve many of our social problems like drug use, crime and homelessness. These are social problems that dont get to many votes so we cast them aside.

cheers

Well said Bridge!

year FTE % change change to date

2000/01 2,631
2001/02 2,829 7.5% 7.5%
2002/03 2,869 1.4% 9.1%
2003/04 2,915 1.6% 10.8%
2004/05 2,973 2.0% 13.0%
2005/06 2,868 -3.5% 9.0%
2006/07 2,929 2.1% 11.3%
2007/08 2,976 1.6% 13.1%

Those are the total annualized FTE counts for all students enrolled at UNBC, other than foreign students.

The data table for all BC universities can be downloaded by going to the linked page and clicking on the Exel pivot table hyperlink for those interested. There is even an explanation for those who do not know how FTEs are counted.

[url]http://www.bcheadset.com/Annualized_FTE.htm[url]

If you want more stats from the source rather than some hand-me-down filtered site, they are here. Warning - only for the use of serious researchers, not people who are interested in passing on negative spin.

http://www.bcheadset.com

Having said that, look at the increase of 13% over 7 years and ask yourselves how much the City population has increased over that time and how much the high school population has increased over that time.

Then scratch your heads and figure out the answer.

http://www.bcheadset.com/Annualized_FTE.htm

Gus.

The City population has decreased over this period and so has the high school population, and graduations.

If you consider that the average age of Undergraduate students at UNBC is 26 years, and the average age of Graduate students is 37 years, this would suggest that the number of FTE's is not solely related to students graduating from High School, in this area. It would seem that a large number of the the FTE students graduated prior to 2001, or came from an area outside of the Northern Interior. Thats one possible answer to the conundrum.

Because of the FTE calculation in use you could also have a situation where you could have a huge increase in part time students, and a decrease in Undergraduate, and Graduate Students and you would still show an increase overall of FTE students.

Appreciate the information and links.

You are right on the money Palopu. That is why UNBC can actually continue to increase its student numbers to an eventual limit.

My view, looking at some other universities in Canada, that limit can easily be 50% more than now quite easily within the next 10 years and even 100% more than now within 15 years if they were going to do a few things:

1. select a series of programs that are excellent and build on each other for support both from the point of view of efficiency and effectiveness.

2. avoid a scattergun effect of too many programs

3. do a tough self evaluation of all the support services at UNBC and make sure that they are second best to virtually no other university. Start with the residences and take a new attitude of how to run them.

4. find research based businesses who want to work at, near and with UNBC and create a research park to support some of the staff and post grad students.

5. Participate in more small conferences in the ereas of specialization and bring more of those conferences to the campus to promote it to post grad students.

6. nurture select profs as well as post grad students - invest more in your human resource products as well as the human resource creators of those products. (sholarships and bursaries)

7. Every day when staff and students rise and shine for a new day, repeat "YES WE CAN" 5 times and build a school song around that.

8. Ignore those peope who say "NO WE CAN'T".

I think we should be happy with a university of about 6,000 to 8,000 FTE by 2020.

Just so that we all understand that it can be accomplished in a small community and has been in several.

Kingston Ontario, population 117,207 (2006 census) CMA population 152,358

Queens University has a FTE population of over 20,000.

That is 131 students per 1,000 CMA population

Prince George has a CMA population of 83,225. Use the round figure of 4000 FTE. that makes it 48 per 1,000 CMA population.

Kingston has few regional offerings, unlike UNBC. Let us assume that the PG campus has 3,500 FTE (we can find out the number and plg it in. That would make it 42 FTE per 1,000 CMA.

As can be seen, we have a long way to go. The interesting thing is that this is not just a PG characteristic. It is a BC characteristic. On a rate basis, we have fewer students in University as well as other post secondary education intitutions than any other province.

We have some way to go, and UNBC needs to be part of that growth. They are on the right path, except they seemed to have been resting on their laurels a bit too much and were unable to find a good President who could turn that around.

Unlike others on here, I wish them luck in finding one this time around. This city depends on that selection as much as it depends on good people at the helm of the major companies in the region.

Gus. It was the YES WE CAN PEOPLE who took the Americans into Iraq, they ignored the NO WE CANT people.

I agree with your strategy for growing the University, however with the long term population decrease in the Northern Interior, the increase in Universities in Kamloops, and Kelowna, the recession that we could be into for the next 2 to 5 years, the decline in the number of people who graduate from High school with sufficient grades to enter University, makes a 50% increase highly unlikely.

Your own numbers show that there was very little growth from 2001 to 2008 and I suspect that that will be the trend for the next 10 years.

Holy Palopu, what are you smoking? Got too much time on your hands? - what was that. the numbers have increased - good news...do you analyze all things to such a degree...after your post I just couldn't read anymore, my head hurt too much.

Gus I don't agree with your numbers. Look at what is just down the road, Toronto and to the north Ottawa so I don't think its fare to only use the Kingston regional population in comparison to Prince George. Kingston is surrounded by a huge population base and the cost of living is less drawing in students.

The data shows that from 1995 to 2002, UNBC FTE increased from around zero to
2,869. During the same 7 year period from 2002 to 2009 [last years of Jago and 1st term of Dean McGill] UNBC numbers have hardly increased by 150 FTE and current FTE is almost equal to 2004/05 FTE [according to above data].

The long term projection for UNBC [before establishment] was 12,000 FTE which is now considered way out of reach. The more recent UNBC official projections is 2% increase per year and with a long term FTE of less than 3800 by 2020. gus, your FTE of 6000-8000 by 2020 for UNBC is daydreaming again, like your dream of PG's pupulation reaching 1 Million in less
than 100 years[??].

The UNBC report on computer science was missing for 2007/08 and based on the above data, the sitution is worse than I thought. With 49+16 [undergrad+grad] for 2007/08, the total number of
FTE for computer science comes to 65
which is 180 FTE short of 246 target
FTE. At the beginning of DTO [Double The Op.] in 2001, the Computer Science FTE was around half of 246 [i.e. around 120 FTE with some adjustment for grad students]. So from 2001-2007, UNBC has halfed [H] the Computer Science FTE from around 120 to around 60, instead of doubling it [i.e. HTO instead of DTO]. Even less than half for undergrad numbers despite all DTO Millions UNBC received and the trend is still negative.

YES, WE CAN [mismanage public money]?? I agree that Jago and Dean McGill are more like Bush and Rumsfeld. Jago coming back after 2 terms is like US putting Bush back in charge for another year and with Rumsfeld in charge of selecting the next president. I read that Dean McGill is in the committee selecting the new president for UNBC. YES, WE CAN [. . .]??

...

PS There are FIVE=4+1 new members in
the UNBC board and the former mayor of PG Colin Kinsley is another new member in UNBC board ..., Welcome aboard [?]

The biggest thing that did in UNBC was the President that they just fired / paid off to leave before he did much more damage to the place. That was two years of negativity and many senior staff left and it has damaged relationships with the faculty and staff big time. It is going to take at least two years, after the new President is found, to recover from all that damage.

Actually Dr. Jago heads up the group looking for the new president and I have much more faith this time around they will find someone. He was not involved in finding his replacement the first time. Note, it is just like trying to find a good plumber. There is limited plumbers available and at present there is 9 Universities in Canada looking for a President. There are limited people who a qualified to do the job and sometimes you don't get the best.

"Gus I don't agree with your numbers. Look at what is just down the road, Toronto and to the north Ottawa so I don't think its fare to only use the Kingston regional population in comparison to Prince George."

Both Toronto and Ottawa, as well as Montreal down the road in the other direction, have several Universities of their own in each community.

Queens is one of the most expensive Universities in the country to go to. What Queens does have is the highest dollar value of scholarships and bursaries of any University in Canada. It is not as if it is within commuting distance.

" .... the cost of living is less drawing in students .... "

Referenced above.

But for the nay sayers, let's take Lakehead University at Thunder Bay.

CMA population for Thunder bay was 122,907 in 2006 (down, by the way from 1996)

Lakehead enrollment just over 7,800, about twice UNBC.

Lakehead has several regional operations similar to UNBC.

A rate of 64 students per 1,000 population. Still better than UNBC by 33%.

If you need more examples, I will give them to you. Lakehead is on the low end of the scale. PG is not yet a University town by those standards. It can be.

Of course with some of the people posting on here, it is amazing we ever get anywhere with anything. They have personal vendettas to accomplish, for whatever reason.

The long term projections of PG population was 200,000. In reality it never materialized. The city still thinks it is over 86.000 , the signs to the city say 77,000 and the census says even less. I am not too concerned if UNBc doesn't meet the FTE planned amounts as those are done by the government and told to UNBC to achieve. Obviously they are not always possible. I am more concerned about the quality of the education going on up here and given all the good reviews of that portion, that is what we should be concerned about.

"Of course with some of the people posting on here, it is amazing we ever get anywhere with anything. They have personal vendettas to accomplish, for whatever reason"

Off the top of my head, I don't think there is anything I've agreed with more on Opinion 250 than this post gus.

I'm actually starting to wonder if many of the commentators on Opinion 250 have ever even gone to college or university. It's not automatically like high school where you just go to the place that is closest to your home. Obviously we can and will continue to attract students from Northern BC, but we should also aggressively market UNBC provincially, nationally and globally. Every other university does it and every single year we have graduates of Prince George high schools going all over the place to fulfill their post secondary needs. There is no reason we can't continue to grow UNBC into the future, while providing benefit to the economy of Prince George in the process. Gus has made some great suggestions on how to continue to do this.

I would also suggest that there isn't a single thing in PG that raises the profile of the city more (other than bad air) than UNBC. We need to leverage that and use it to our advantage. It will assist us in our growth and diversification and it will be a significant contributor to the future of PG. You'd be amazed how many people I talk to from the Lower Mainland who say "I've heard that UNBC is nice". The awareness is getting out there and there is no downfall whatsoever for us as PG residents to be ambassadors for UNBC and to speak of it in a positive manner. It's no different than selling the other benefits of PG, the proximity to the outdoors, the affordable housing, etc.

"It was the YES WE CAN PEOPLE who took the Americans into Iraq"

Palopu ... I do not recall the Bush administration having that slogan when they decided to go into Iraq. I do recall that their slogan was "Shock and Awe".

Quite different from the "Yes We Can" slogan of the Obama Campaign. How quickly some forget.

"Actually Dr. Jago heads up the group looking for the new president and I have much more faith this time around they will find someone. He was not involved in finding his replacement the first time."

A recipe for another disastar. Jago and **ALL THE PRESIDENT's MEN** including Dr McGill were fully in charge of selecting the former VP Dr Howard Brunt and the former president Dr Don Cozzetto.

It was a mistake by the board to bring back Jago as interim president, considering the harsh criticism against him in the 2003 collegiality report prepared by Dr Poff (commenting that "there is no proper government in UNBC") and the more recent report prepared by the UNBC independent consultants in 2007. According to the 2007 report prepared by the UNBC consultants, "[he] micromanaged everything in the president's office".

Note that the UNBC FTE numbers started going down under Jago's watch (2005/06)around when Dr Poff stepped down and started recovering a bit when Jago/Poff team was gone. If you look closely at the FTE data, it is as if UNBC has slipped for 3 years in 2005/06 back to 2002/03 FTE and the FTE for 2006/07 and 2007/08 match 2003/04 and 2004/05 FTEs respectively. Is it going to slip again in 2008/09?

I think trying to link so closely who is in charge of UNBC to the FTE is not something that can be linked. There is too many other variables not being factored in.

Dr. Jago had no vote on his replacement, as is typical when a President leaves. He does this time around.

The UNBC Independent consultant report of 2007 was a total flop. Most of the recommendations that were done, have since been un-done as they didn't make sense and just didn't work. There is still some recommendations that haven't been un-done but the work is underway as that consultant firm had no idea how to structure a small size University as UNBC is. They would have done better at UBC or Uvic with their plans.

I think the performance of an institation and those in charge of it should be measured and monitored and FTE is one good measure for performance evaluation of the
president, VPs and the Deans in a university.

I have read the 2007 25-page report by www.leading-by-design.com and the quality is very good and in opposition to what is claimed here, they compare the performance of UNBC in the context of other smaller universities. Lunarguy, have you ever read the report and share with us why you claim it was a flop? Here are some excerpts:
----
"... [Leading by Design]to conduct a review ... and consider improvements that could be made to the university's budget planning process." [p1]

"Leading by Design’s analysis confirms UNBC’s own estimates of the magnitude of its budget problem. Left unaddressed, by 2010-11 the gap between annual income and expenditures will have grown to $7.9 million, and the cumulative budget shortfall will have reached $22.9 million."[p4]

"UNBC’s operating income per weighted student is more than 20% higher than the average of Mount Allison, St. Francis Xavier, Winnipeg, Trent, Lethbridge, Regina and Brandon." [p4]

"Over the last four years, faculty FTE’s have grown by 7.0% and staff FTE’s by 13.8%." [p4]

"Nevertheless, even taking these considerations into account, UNBC appears fairly funded relative to other BC universities and the selection of small universities across Canada. These data suggest that:"

"- in the short term the current budget crisis should be treated as an expenditure
management problem rather than a revenue issue."[p5]

"UNBC is a ‘flat’ organization consisting of a number of disconnected units, many of which are quite small. This structure has the effect of involving the President and Vice-Presidents in an excessive number of issues and decisions, many of which are of an operational nature." [p5]

"There were a number of comments about the need for more effective accountability
systems, relating to both organizational and individual performance." [p5]
----
The report has recommendation on [D] budgeting, [E] structure, [F] next steps and some of these recommendations have already been implemented.

Nowicki wrote: "I think the performance of an institation and those in charge of it should be measured and monitored and FTE is one good measure for performance evaluation of the president, VPs and the Deans in a university."

FTE is a lagging indicator which can show up more like 2 to 3 years after some action unless someone shuts programs down from one day to the next or some such action.

In addition, of course, as lunarguy said, it is an indicator with dependencies on multiple factors.

So, try being a bit more scientific and imaginative with your conclusions please. Without that you have not made a valid point.

Nowicki - budget matters are leading indicators. So waht actions happened at UNBC as a result of having insufficient operating funds that would have affected FTEs a few years ago and wahtr changes were made to cause the FTEs to increase in the past two years?

Come on, show us that you really understand this stuff.

Nowicki I have read the document, was involved in the process and very familiar with the workings of UNBC.

I liked the fact that UNBC was a flat organization. Why pay for a bunch of middle managers who did little actual work, well thanks to that report we now have that at UNBC. Before from the lowest employee to the President there was maybe 3 levels of Managers, now there can 5-6 levels. What does that benefit ? They took people away from being staff and actually working for students into this Management structure that just makes the organization slow to make a decision and therefore often things have to escalate to the higher levels anyhow.

UNBC is a Regional University operating campus locations in very remote northern locations compared to say Brandon University, Winnipeg, Trent, etc. That costs extra amounts in technology, travel, recruitment, etc.

Lunarguy, the need for changing the UNBC governing structure was felt in UNBC long before the arrival of Cozzetto/Brunt. Jago/Brunt's Vision initiative was one of the triggers to partition UNBC into smaller units, but the 2002 problem between Dean McGill and some of the programs in CSAM was also about the number of units under the control of one dean.

UNBC needed change to introduce a new structur to handle the rapid expansion from a few no of programs to managable programs in multiple faculties. UNBC needed change to correct the problems of unfair performance evaluations which were not dealt with in flat structure. UNBC also needed change to handle the greater increase of faculty/staff FTE compared to student FTE increase and the budget shortfalls. the need for "CHANGE". And people are resistent to change.

"There were a number of comments about the need for more effective accountability
systems, relating to both organizational and individual performance." [p5,2007report]

UNBC has problems in its government and the faculty are not happy with system of evaluation which is based on friendship with your chair/your dean. Faculty are kept unsatisfied, they don't bother about increasing FTE and let the chair/dean and friends take care of it. Unfortunately for UNBC, the ministry's accountability and performance evaluations are based on FTE targets and those who meet the FTE targets get a bigger share of the pie, regardless of operating in a remote location.

"the faculty are not happy with system of evaluation which is based on friendship with your chair/your dean."

Welcome to the real world of the workplace.

So has this protectionism evolved to such an extent that there are faculty members who should not be teaching and/or doing research? What is the faculty association doing about it. Does the association have any sort of standard for admitting people to the association and keeping people in the association qualified to be members of the association? Is this a real professional association which deals with unethical practices and sub standard practices of its members? Or is this an association that knows full well who are the good teachers/researchers and who should really not be there, but expects administrators to do the dirty work?

"Who me? I just work here and complain a lot. It's none of my business."