Job Cuts To Be Phased In Over 3 Years

Monday, January 29, 2007 11:42 AM

-- photo courtesy of UNBC

With a $2-million dollar budget shortfall looming, the University of Northern B.C. has announced it will be cutting up to 25 faculty and 25 staff positions over the next three years.

The job losses, along with a re-structuring at UNBC, will allow for a balanced budget at the end of March and help check a predicted deficit of $6-million dollars per year by 2010.

UNBC President Don Cozzetto, "There will be some executive and staff positions that will end immediately." But he says, "The goal is to, of course, minimize wherever possible, the impact on faculty and staff, wherever possible implement incentive programs, early retirement programs, re-organization, re-structuring, those kinds of strategies to lessen the impact."

At a news conference this morning, Cozzetto would not offer details on the positions to be axed at this point. He says the directive just came from the Board of Governor’s retreat over the weekend, so the university has been "scrambling."

Cozzetto says, "We talked to some staff this morning. The entire day is going to be devoted to meeting with the various employee groups, and I’m doing that personally."

There will be no immediate faculty losses because of the collective agreement. Cozzetto says the Deans are working on the development of a plan to phase in over the three-year budget.

He expects the multi-year ’phase in’ to keep the impact on students at an absolute minimum, but admits it is a flat student enrolment over the past five years that has led to the large budget gap. To that end, Cozzetto says the university is looking at a more expansive approach to marketing UNBC and bringing in students. He says that may mean offering more business and trade tech programs.

All in all, Cozzetto says the re-structuring -- to be unveiled fully later this afternoon via a link on the University’s website -- maintains UNBC’s mandate of being a truly regional facility, by finetuning its focus.

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Posted on Monday, January 29, 2007 11:42 AM in News by Michelle Cyr-Whiting

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Comments

Posted by: lunarguy on January 29 2007 12:12 PM

Well there goes another 50 good paying jobs from PG. Thanks liberals :) So much for being excited about the low job vacancy rate in PG.

All the politicians took great pleasure in announcing the low job vacancy rate recently so lets see which one comes to the plate and takes some credit for this :)

Posted by: tiemens1 on January 29 2007 12:47 PM

Good paying jobs? Maybe faculty but most of the staff positions are paid far less than their counterparts in industry or even at the college. The benefits are good though.

Posted by: REALIST on January 29 2007 3:11 PM

Yes it is true that tuition fees have been raised across Canada and not just by the B.C. Liberals. However, My point is that most children learn at an early age not to jump off a cliff just becuse all their friends do. We are told that our leaders want a healthy, vibrant economy. Their entire focus has been to support big business at all cost to virtually evey British Columbian citizen. These same businesses need highly trained professionals. For this government to put secondary education costs out of reach for enough people to cause a decline in enrolement, just shows how shortsighted and in fact flimsy their ideology has become. This neocon ideology is so schizophrenic in its focus, anyone with the ability to think should see that British Columbia ( and in fact most of Canada) is being led by a group of greedy politicians who truley could not care less about those who elect them. Thier stratagy on education is shooting everyone of us in the foot even the taxpayer who whines about his taxes going towards education subsities. Unfortunately, the same greedy selfish motives of our leaders get mimiced by these whiners who are unable to see the overall value of education to our entire society. It is a sad state of affairs when even intelligent people start to repeat the same spin driven drivel that our leaders feed them. We are all sheep.

Posted by: trusted on January 29 2007 5:01 PM

Probably been "top heavy" for years.
Crunch finally hit home.
No quick fix with this problem, better start the down sizing A S A P.

Posted by: metalman on January 29 2007 5:36 PM

They'll cut at the bottom and toward the middle, leaving the top intact, except for one or two they want to make an example of.
If I am proven wrong, I will gladly admit that my predictions were in error.
metalman.

Posted by: RUEZ on January 29 2007 5:37 PM

Considering the backlog of people trying to enter university and college, is reducing faculty by 25 a good idea?

Posted by: Palopu on January 29 2007 8:52 PM

There is no backlog of people trying to get into this University Ruez, thats one of the reasons they are cutting faculty and staff.

They have **dragged the rivers** and searched the graveyards looking for bodies, however they have come to the end of the line. The best they can do now is hang on and hope things do not get worse.

The key word for this University now is **sustainability** Which means **hang on**

Its interesting that with all the **high grade** brain power out at that University that it took them 12 years to figure out that this whole University in the North Concept was flawed from the start.

A slow learner with a lead pencil, piece of paper, and an eraser, could have figured out that with the demographics of North Central British Columbia, along with the High School Completion rates, graduation rates, decline in enrolments in elementary schools, static population, that in a short period of time this University would run out of students.

I suspect that the next thing they do will almalgamate it with the College, or make it satellite of UBC, like Kelowna.

Posted by: Chadermando on January 29 2007 10:25 PM

I disagree Palopu. I think you are selling UNBC President Don Cozzetto a little short. If anything I come away with confidence in the universities future with his display of leadership.

Palopu of anyone on this board should support the idea of running the university with a balanced budget with sustainable growth rather than mortgaging the university future? I suspect your satellite delusion of defeatism with everything university is clouding your judgement.

25 and 25 is a good chance to clean house. Any new CEO of a large corporation would surely do the same. Should the new budget projections prove to be a little pessimistic he will have room to leave his footprint on the university. I think that is a positive when you look at the areas he sees as growth areas. Business for example is the primary area of study for international students, and trade teck addressing a local skills set need.

I would recommend the university become more aggressive in their promotions through free media in target markets (ie Burns Lake, China, Vancouver, Toronto, Russia). Put together the news story and hand it to the media, just like big business does. It costs nothing, puts UNBC spin through a very credible third party, and sparks interest far more effectively than traditional 'marketing'. Once you have their interest you can now make the sell.

I think this is an area where UNBC�s Director of Public Relations, Rob van Adrichem can do a better job. Marketing masked as news, all they need is a few catchy news stories to promote.

Time Will Tell