{"id":20695,"date":"2021-03-02T10:29:34","date_gmt":"2021-03-02T18:29:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=20695"},"modified":"2021-03-08T09:08:24","modified_gmt":"2021-03-08T17:08:24","slug":"camosun-gets-government-approval-to-run-at-deficit-for-two-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2021\/03\/02\/camosun-gets-government-approval-to-run-at-deficit-for-two-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Camosun gets government approval to run at deficit for two years"},"content":{"rendered":"

The provincial government has approved Camosun College and other public post-secondary institutions in BC to run at a deficit for two fiscal years due to a decrease in revenue resulting from the COVID-19 crisis.<\/p>\n

Camosun is approved, along with 19 other institutions, to run a deficit up to $178.9 million for fiscal year 2020-21; it\u2019s approved, along with 16 other institutions, to run a deficit up to $75.2 million for fiscal year 2021-22.<\/p>\n

Camosun vice president of administration and chief financial officer Deborah Huelscher says the college is still working with the $6.7-million deficit projection it made public in January, as well as a deficit projection for next year that Huelscher suspects will be smaller than the current projected deficit.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re just about to enter into March; there are a lot of accounting entries and things that happen at year-end,\u201d she says, \u201cso it could be a little bit higher, it could be lower.\u201d<\/p>\n

Huelscher calls Camosun\u2019s cost-saving measures, which will allow the college to continue to provide programs and services to students, \u201cquite austere.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s allowing us to maintain the current level of programs and services,\u201d says Huelscher. \u201cWe did make a few reductions in services, but that\u2019s about what we\u2019re offering on campus.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Camosun College is allowed to run a deficit for two fiscal years due to the COVID-19 crisis (file photo).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Huelscher\u2014who says other post-secondary institutions have been in a deficit in the past, but Camosun hasn’t\u2014says it\u2019s been challenging to keep as many services as possible going at the college.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are doing a really great job,\u201d she says. \u201cWe just don\u2019t know what the patterns are going to look like.\u201d<\/p>\n

The college has had to use a variety of cost-saving measures to navigate through the crisis, such as a reduction on travel, the implementation of salary freezes, and layoffs, including temporarily suspending Continuing Education. Huelscher says that some positions at the college have had to remain empty in order to keep up with the cost of programs and services.<\/p>\n

\u201cInternally, we\u2019re taking some of the impact because we\u2019re trying to make sure that we reduce as much as possible and give back to our students,\u201d she says. (Huelscher could not confirm what positions, or how many, are currently empty.)<\/p>\n

With the deficit approval, the college has been given time, says Huelscher, to figure out what the future may look like.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur hope is that we\u2019ll see that [enrollment] improvement come fall. For us, international enrolment\u2026 provides a significant revenue source to us, but we need to return to a balanced position at the end of two years; we\u2019re hopeful that we\u2019ll be able to have more students when we get to fall, but we don\u2019t know what that will look like on campus yet,\u201d she says. \u201cWe are predicting a deficit for next year, but balance beyond that. That will change as we progress through the year and we see what happens with vaccines.\u201d Huelscher says that getting back into investments once things stabilize is key for the future of Camosun.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have extra dollars to invest in initiative projects and those sorts of things,\u201d she says, \u201cwhich are important because they move us forward, but we\u2019ve been focusing on what\u2019s absolutely essential.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The provincial government has approved Camosun College and other public post-secondary institutions in BC to run at a deficit for two fiscal years due to a decrease in revenue resulting from the COVID-19 crisis. Camosun is approved, along with 19 other institutions, to run a deficit up to $178.9 million for fiscal year 2020-21; it\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20158,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20695"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20697,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20695\/revisions\/20697"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}