By Katherine Gibson (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: February 19, 2014
The English as a Second Language (ESL) department at UFV is facing cuts after the federal government decided to remove $17 million in funding across the province as of April 1.
UFV and other B.C. universities were initially encouraged to apply directly to the federal government for this Citizen and Immigration (CIC) funding, since CIC now directly allocates these funds themselves. However, the Canadian Press has reported that none of the university proposals were accepted.
The $17 million was used to run lower level ESL courses, which Sue Brigden, UFV’s dean of access and open studies, explains were never intended for academic purposes.
“Lower level funding is for settlement purposes, for people who are not Canadian citizens and are Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) eligible,” Brigden says. “It’s not designed for people to go into academic programs.”
Although the specific purpose for the federal funding is now clear, Brigden emphasizes the money was rolled into the overall funding allotted for ESL and supported all the offered programs within the department.
“The federal government had been sending the provincial government the CIC funds, which were rolled into the post-secondary programs and into our base funding,” Brigden says. “Nobody ever knew that [the funds were being combined together]. We were never told until it was announced that the federal government was taking back that money.”
The lack of communication between the federal and provincial governments, as well as the university has the left the ESL department in a tough position. Cuts in financing are leading to cuts to the program’s staff.
“There will be cuts; advanced notice of layoff has gone out to several people,” Brigden says. “There are people involved and there are people’s lives involved — it’s very hard.”
Had the federal government accepted the proposals, UFV’s focus-shift away from lower-level ESL programming would still have hindered their ability to receive this form of funding.
As Ravi Philips, UFV head of international marketing explains, there has been a decrease in the market size for this particular target demographic — especially for universities. Competing against language schools with cheaper tuition and faster learning projections, UFV has had a hard time recruiting international students for lower level ESL.
“The trend is that … ESL students are going to language schools. They’re cheaper, they spend more time on the students, and they are able to somehow make them learn English faster,” Philips says.
“We are doing our best to recruit … but when a student comes to us and sees the amount of fees they have to pay us to learn [lower level] ESL, they go to a language school — it’s half the price.”
The English language score requirement for international students, which was removed February 2014, stopped many individuals from coming to UFV. While Phillips notes that UFV’s recent amendment to this policy could potentially open up ESL markets in countries without English language proficiency tests like Russia, China, South Korea, and Japan, the federal government’s removal of funding puts a stop to these prospects.
However, Brigden remains confident in UFV’s ESL department as it is currently run.
“I believe that we will still be able to serve the students,” she concludes.
