Can you blame people for not enroling? The outlook for the forest industry is so bleek who in thier right mind would want to persue it as a career unless your already doing it. The big kicker here is forestry doesnt pay enough compared to trades and engineering careers. People want to make more money and forestry doesnt provide it. Also the younger generation doesnt have a general intrest in moving to small resource towns and working in the bush.

In addition, the younger generation want it all right away...the big salaries , but they don't to work hard to get it.

Two year forestry programs at institutes such as BCIT are quite different from 4 year forestry programs at institutes such as UBC. The former is much more hands on and needs to be located in places closer to the forests. Willingdon in Burnaby is hardly such a place. Too many logistics to overcome to present a good quality program.

Professional foresty, on the other hand, is quite a broad discipline from silviculture to forest engineering and forest economics as well as forest production management. Whatever foresters will not tackle and do, others will and others do. Forests are more and more managed in the world and the knowledge workers required to manage the broad scope of that will not disappear very quickly. The education people who work in that area may very well change.

Perhaps the type of programs offered by professional schools of forestry are not far reaching enough to provide those individuals with the types of skills and knowledge required by the industry.