Now who predicted this a short time ago?
Is anyone surprised?

Certainly not me.

As a staff member at UNBC the numbers we've been hearing are 30 faculty and 40 staff. Significant.

tiemens. Thats much more that Significant, thats huge. Assume $80,000.00 per year per employee for wages and benefits and you are looking at yearly savings of over $5,000,000.00, not including serverance packages. I guess those with **Tenure** are safe.

"Brunt says enrollments have not met projections."

While some will have to deal with how to stop the bleeding, I hope that those people who have been responsible for creating those projections and were in a position to put programs in place to reach those projections will be considered for the first cuts when a determination is being made on who goes first. ...

By the same token, I hope they will be looking at who is the most capable to tweak the programs and promote the UNBC so that student enrolment drops will be minimal.

As metioned before, UNBC just lost a key player in the research area. I understand that they have done better than such a University would typically do in the first years of its operations.

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It is interresting how this got reported in different media.

It appears that the actual shortfall this year is $2million, not $6 million as it appears to have been reported on other media.

So, based on the reporting here, if the cuts are not made, then there will be a shortfall of $6 million by 2010. That can be interpreted in several ways. The simplest one is that if the $2million shortfall is addressed this year, there will be no shortfall in any year leading upt ot and including 2010.

So, taking Palopu's suggested $80,000 average, that means 25 layoffs this year and none after that if new enrollment projections will hold the line and increases in payroll will be taken care of by tuition increases and government funding increases and even research funding increases.

I know staff who have been unsure of themselves since the new president came in. This is not really unexpected to those who work at UNBC.

Besides the shortage in dollars this is also a good opportunity to purge out all the patronage appointments that were done when Dr. Jago was in charge.

The factors that got this University into this position in the first place are not going to go away. According to Brunt the enrolment growth of 5% annually over the last five years was ambitious, considering enrollment remained stagnant over that period. Enrolment has been affected by decreased high school populations, and graduations, a hot economy luring students to the work place, trades training, and heightened competition for students across the Province.

All the projected growth in BC in the next 10 years or so is to take place in areas other than North Central BC, and therefore we are going to get more of the same, people will leave here to work in other areas. ie; Kitimat, Prince Rupert, Ft St John, Dawson Creek, Grande Prairie, Ft Mcmurray, and last but certainly not least the lower mainland.

It now appears that the Universities focus will be on sustainability, however with a student population that never exceeded 3600 and with the distinct possibility that this number will fall, even sustainability over time will become a problem.

In Industry when you have a situation like this, the Good Guy (Jago) leaves on a high note, and then the Bad Guy (Cozzetto) comes in and makes all the cuts and the cost reductions. (usually referred to as the **Hatchet Man** or the *Head Hunter*) once the dirty deed is done, the Bad Guy moves on, (because now nobody likes him) and they bring in a new Good Guy. We'll see how this unfolds.

You got the last paragraph right Palopu. Not that the previous is not right but my ciew is slightly differnt than yours on that. I think that one can deal with those issues. The way not to deal with them is the chicken little approach of the sky is falling. You know, the sort of approach we are taking in the MPB scenario. We are too used to stuff being handed to us on a platter.

Anyway, back to the final paragraph. I am not connected well enought to know whether Jago saw what was coming and decided ot leave on his own, feeling he was unable to cope with the new reality. In which case I think he was astute and did the right thing. He did grow the UNBC which was the cycle it was in and it needed to be done. He did do a good job of that part from what I can tell.

However, it seems that he did not set the scene for the next part.

On the other hand, he could have been told to leave. We may never get to know that. As some people will say, who cares, it is water under the bridge, let's move on.

Maybe historians in 2035 will unearth the story for future audiences who will wonder how the University of the North, spanning circumpolar countries, having 48,000 students enrolled at 19 international compuses located in the circumpolar trading community, in addition to a virtual network of students and professors, came about to become such a multicultural, multilingual institution which others such as UBC, having cut back to 22,000 students and selling their endowment lands to naturist developments, envy.

;-)

Naturist developments? Does that mean nudist colonies? I will now look up that word in the dictionary.

My dictionary says #1 nudism. #2 Or naturalism in philosophy or religion. #3 And it also says the worship of natural objects. (naturist-noun and asjective) (The Canadian Oxford Dictionary) Just as I thought. What's in a word, eh?

I sure hope that when the layoffs start they begin with the massive overbloated bureaucracy that UNBC (and every other university in Canada) has.

I wonder how many family members of staff at UNBC are attending without having to pay tuition? Who else is attending and not paying their way?

How about hiring Professors who can teach rather than write research papers. This would definitely attract more students. It appears to me that many of the so called Professors have very little interest in spending their time teaching students or helping them learn. Chester

One other thing, a family member of mine was complaining how bored he was working at UNBC. He has been hard pressed to actually be productive for more than two hours per day. He expects to be part of the cutbacks. Who would be surprised? He's not.

As in most government agency's, there is a tendancy to be a little top heavy. I'm sure there is room to cut without cutting necessary courses.

Let's face it, when there are only a few people in a class, the instructor must be aware of the possibility that the class must be cut. They would be the last ones to suggest it though. Chester

You got it Harbinger.

If you are familiar with UNBC, you will know that Wreck Beach is right below the escarpement on the southern side of the campus. Put "wreck beach" into a search engine if you are not familiar with it.
;-)

Actually Wreck Beach is way down by UBC and not UNBC :)

Here's my take on enrollment:

With so many jobs needing to be filled, paying good money, who wants to spend all that money and all those years at university, only to find, they still don't know enough to do the job they studied for, and spend the next ten years paying off student loans, when all their friends have had full time jobs making good money all that time, without the burden of a huge debtload to pay back. On top of all that, they end up with a prof that barely speaks english.

We need to fast track education. This whole system is very antiquated. Things have changed....a lot.

BTW: You can make $18 an hour working at the McDonalds in FS John. If that tells you anything about the labor market.

Lunarguy ... oooops.... the unCola word slipped in by mistake where it should have been the Cola word ..... would be kinda cold to have Wreck Beach here. ;-)

TRM .... I very much agree with the part about the job market having a major influence about enrollment at post secondary education institutions. In fact, it may even be influencing high school completion again as well and drop those numbers.

So, if that is true, we can get ready for returning students some time down the road when they are not moving up in the world because they have hit an income ceiling, unless they have gotten themselves into union jobs.

I have heard about the high paying positions available in the fast food and other industries. That is a one sided story. The other side to it is how much it costs to live in those communities. There are some who have gone and have lasted for a few months and have come back. They failed to hook up with others to get reasonable housing and the net earnings after all other expenses are paid are no better.

The other thing about that is that I wonder how much burgers are in the oil patch if they can pay such wages. Do they have a higher turnover, thus the servers are run off their feet? Do they sell smaller burgers? Or are the prices simply higher?

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The second topic .... fast track education? .... I think that is a dream. Remember, we are in the age when more and more people start off in one line of work and typically go through at least another two or three before they are dead beat and tired.

And then they find out they have to learn some more because they cannot afford to retire or discover that they have talents which the volunteer community needs since society can no longer pay for services which used to be provided through tax money or private insurance.

So, there may be a new model of education ... its called continuous learning, not only the practical, on the job stuff, but also the theoretical stuff.

Prime example of that is the transition of mill workers who got hired with grade 12 (or even less than that if you go a bit further back) into a mill that may have employed 100 to 200 people, who end up being closer to the top of the totem pole with respect to time on the job, but no education to move to a technical job. So they get the opportunity to be retrained, but are what is known as functionally illiterate.

So, they have to go back to some basic science, reading skills, math skills, etc. to understand manufacturing processes so that they can sit in front of a monitor to become part of the little human interaction there still is with that process which now sees 10 to 20 people per shift producing 10 times the quantity of product.

Bottom line, you cannot produce goods for world market consumption with an uneducated workforce, unless you are willing to forever rely on people from other parts of the world selling you machinery, providing the technical expertise to maintain it, and even sending in the workforce to operate it.

Owl. I dont think Canada Produces goods for world market consumption, unless you mean bulk products such as coal,sulphur,potash,wheat,lumber,woodpulp,steel, ingots,iron, copper, etc;. All bulk products that can and are produced and shipped without too much high grade education. You would be hard pressed to find any products in stores in Canada that were produced in Canada.

It all comes down to what you consider as uneducated. A very small portion of the people in North America in the last 100 years were what you would consider highly educated, however they managed to build the North American continent to what it is to-day.

In a efficient society that can produce goods and services, maintain a standing Army for defence, and look after everything that must be looked after, you will always require more boots on the ground than highly educated people sitting in offices.

Without the men in the bush, farmers in the field, people in mines, workers in the factories, service people, etc; a Country couldnt function.

Higher education makes a contribution, however how much of a contribution in comparison to what has to be done on a daily basis to provide, food, water, and shelter, who knows:

God knows how many people have starved to death, because all they had to eat on their plate was Higher Education.

You can educate all the people in Canada to a 4 year University level and you will only end up with a lot of people with a higher education doing mundane jobs. We cant all be high rollers.

Higher education has its place but only as a small part of the bigger picture.