By Karen Aney (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: November 7, 2012
Jackie Hogan is the chief financial officer at UFV. There have been recent developments at UFV. First, faculty and staff are beginning to move into collective bargaining with the university, to argue for better wages and smaller class sizes. Second, there have been a number of budget changes from the government; this means the university, staff and faculty are encouraged to find savings wherever they can. As chief financial officer, Jackie Hogan shared her unique perspective on how these changes could affect our institution and what changes are already in the works.
Can you tell us a little bit about the Transformation Project and what it means for our school?
The Administrative Services Delivery Transformation Project was sort of started by the Ministry of Advanced Education . . . [it was about] getting together to look at efficiencies across the sectors rather than each institution looking for their own.
And how effective do you think it was?
There are some opportunities that could be come up with. I think we are a very efficient sector already so I’m not sure the results that are hoped for will be realized as quickly and efficiently as maybe the original concept was.
Budget 2012 did announce reduced funding to the post-secondary sector, and while the link between funding and cuts and this project is not a direct link . . . it was based on info that they thought there would be efficiencies and savings in the sector. They’re careful not to align those directly . . . but there is a correlation.
Is there currently a risk to the job security of anyone at UFV, given the efficiencies they were looking at?
No, not at this point. We don’t know what the final results are going to be. There are opportunities for looking at all those areas further, but at this stage, no – I really can’t see that there would be anything that would affect UFV directly out of this draft of the report.
If the project doesn’t save the sector as much money as they’re hoping for, what will that do to the budget cuts? Could it mean a tuition raise?
We don’t know . . . the funding reduction announced in 2012 [is] 20 million in 2013 – 2014 and a further 30 million in 2014 – 2015.
So if the report doesn’t identify that those are achievable, are they going to hold with the funding reduction or are they going to revise the budget?
Under our Tuition Limit Policy, which is set by the ministry, we can raise tuition by the rate of inflation each year. So we do, because—if we’re not getting funding from the government, which we aren’t [receiving] for inflationary costs—all of the costs of running the university . . . are still going up.
So we raise tuition by as much as they allow us to, and that rate is set by the government. It’s been two per cent the last few years, and we have increased tuition by two per cent because it’s one of our largest revenue sources – it’s about 25 per cent, so we do take that opportunity to increase tuition.
Is there a specific ratio of our income that is directed towards salary versus institutional costs?
No, there isn’t. It becomes part of our overall budget.
We’re actually going through a little bit of a budget review model right now. Right now we centralize [all income], and budgets are allocated based on historical incremental budgeting. We’re looking right now at a model that would see a percentage of tuition go back to the faculty. Which won’t change things particularly in the first year, but it will in future years when they have an incentive around their tuition revenue target that will make them think, “Okay, how do I make sure I’m offering the courses or the programs that will bring in the most amount of students?”
That’s where we’re heading, but it’s a large ship to change gears on.
Is there a time frame for implementation?
We’re moving towards it maybe by next fiscal year. There’s been lots of discussion about it.
Students at other institutions have had difficulty with communication issues from administration through job action. Is that a risk here as well?
I would hope that we would make sure that we’ve got lots of communication going out, especially to students . . . there’s one product we’re looking at that would text alerts . . . it’s another investment, another infrastructure tool we would need.
It’s coming from the emergency notification side of things . . . but it does provide communication of any type. There’s several different vendors so it would be a choice which one to go with.
It’s actually an opt-in program; you would have to provide us with your information. When you register you would provide your information . . . if you don’t select that you want to be in it then you’re excluded from it.
Regarding the upcoming collective bargaining, I know that the University of Victoria has settled their contract and stopped their job action – they agreed to a two per cent raise retroactive to July 2012 and another raise of two per cent in July 2013.
If we can get to somewhere like UVIC, that would be good. I’m not sure – again we have to go into it as a sector, not just UFV, so that’s one of our challenges.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
