By Jessica Wind (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: June 19, 2013
UFV is bursting at the seams, and government funding continues to dry up. Apart from hefty waitlists, we haven’t really felt the tightening belt the government keeps strapped around post-secondary institutions.
That is, until recently. And UFV isn’t the only one getting hit.
A recent Capilano University budget showed a $1.3 million shortfall, according to The Vancouver Sun. Proposed slashes to programs would see the end of textile arts, studio arts, interactive design, computing science, geology and advanced ceramics. Some of these programs are unique to the university and would force local students to go out of province for their education. Just what BC wants, I’m sure.
Capilano has since suspended the vote on the austerity budget in order to provide more time to find a better solution after protests from students, staff and faculty members. By cutting full programs instead of thinning out funding across departments, they will be able to maintain the quality of their core programs.
UFV is doing things a bit differently. While they’re not saying goodbye to any of their programs yet, they are making significant cuts to services on campus that will certainly affect students.
The Abbotsford Times reported that $46 million will be cut from post-secondary education over the next three years thanks to Minister of Finance and six-time Abbotsford West MLA Michael De Jong’s February budget proposal.
Open common areas that foster a healthy study atmosphere and lively community are being restructured to make more offices for the bursting university.
The student services centre is boarded up for renovations, with the waiting area having nearly disappeared. Library-seeking students in Mission will need to commute to Abbotsford or Chilliwack; the closure of the Mission campus library was announced at the beginning of the month.
We are also seeing the restructuring of faculty reception which eliminates the service that allows students to hand in papers after a professor’s office or classroom hours have ended.
What does it all mean? Perhaps not much, perhaps it means that UFV is simply streamlining their services across their multi-community campuses. Perhaps it is an attempt to cut from areas that won’t affect students as directly rather than cutting whole programs.
In an interview with The Abbotsford Times, VP provost Eric Davis commented on how the cuts will always affect students.
“At whatever level, just about everything we do at UFV impacts student services and it’s a big challenge to take money out and not affect them,” he said.
The moral of the story is that as services keep disappearing from campuses, waitlists keep growing and tuition keeps climbing, it will no longer become financially feasible or worthwhile for students to attend university. They will have to take whatever entry level, low-paying jobs they can swing or they will have to swallow the mountain of student loan debt, which frankly BC, you aren’t going to be getting back any time soon.
Fast forward 30 years when we’ve forgotten about this $46 million funding cut (and any more that may come our way) we will be undereducated and skills that come with university education like critical thinking, analysis, creativity, composition and knowledge of the world outside our own communities will have become obsolete within a generation.
As the effects of the funding cuts are ongoing and ever changing, we will continue to look into the topic. If you have questions you would like us to investigate or if you have an opinion you’d like to share, send it to jess@ufvcascade.ca.
