{"id":9040,"date":"2014-05-07T09:33:18","date_gmt":"2014-05-07T16:33:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=9040"},"modified":"2014-05-14T09:32:36","modified_gmt":"2014-05-14T16:32:36","slug":"camosun-board-of-governors-approves-balanced-budget-no-programs-to-be-cut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2014\/05\/07\/camosun-board-of-governors-approves-balanced-budget-no-programs-to-be-cut\/","title":{"rendered":"Camosun board of governors approves balanced budget, no programs to be cut"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Camosun College board of governors recently approved a $114-million balanced budget for fiscal year 2014-15, with no cancellation of programs. There had been concern<\/a> amongst programs such as the Music Professional Studies program, University Transfer, and the Early Learning and Care program that they would either face significant reductions or be cancelled entirely.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Camosun College’s music program will not be cancelled, despite recent worries that it would (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Camosun College president Kathryn Laurin says that while no programs have been cancelled, there will still be repercussions of the new budget, which was approved at the Board of Governors\u2019 monthly meeting on May 5.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a 2.5-percent reduction going right across the college, so everybody\u2019s going to feel something,\u201d says Laurin, mentioning there will be some faculty and staff layoffs.<\/p>\n

As well, there will be a reduction of one cohort in the Applied Business Technology program, and University Transfer students will face a reduction of sections that have lower enrollment numbers. The budget doesn\u2019t impact the college\u2019s ESL training (domestic ESL students had their funding cut earlier this year<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody is going to be impacted in some way, but what we\u2019ve managed to avoid is actually reducing program offerings,\u201d says Laurin. \u201cWe\u2019re keeping students\u2019 needs front of mind. So it\u2019s as good an outcome that we could have hoped for under the circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n

Laurin says that the college is \u201cvery proud\u201d of the transparent process they used this year. They consulted both internally and externally and received lots of feedback throughout the process, she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe tried to keep the internal community apprised as we worked through it,\u201d says Laurin. \u201cThe result of that was that faculty and staff stepped up to the plate. Those areas where we were really looking under the microscope and saying, \u2018We might have to contemplate reductions here,\u2019 many of them came back to us with alternatives and said, \u2018We could do X and Y instead,\u2019 and those turned out to be actually much more plausible and allowed us to continue to run the programs without interruption.\u201d<\/p>\n

Members of the Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) say the budget is good, but not without its negative ramifications.<\/p>\n

“The college administration and board of governors have been required to make some incredibly difficult decisions,\u201d says CCSS external executive Rachael Grant. \u201cAlthough the budget that has passed is in some ways better than was initially anticipated with no programs being eliminated, students will still be negatively affected with higher tuition fees, reductions in services, and fewer class choices. The CCSS is deeply concerned by the lack of priority being given to public postsecondary, as the BC Liberal government continues to fail in increasing funding.”<\/p>\n

Looking ahead, Camosun\u2019s Laurin says that she\u2019s feeling a great sense of relief today about the budget and about not having to cancel programs, but she admits that tomorrow \u201cis going to bring us more challenges\u201d as the college moves forward against constant funding struggles.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody wants to cut programs,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s a last resort. I can\u2019t say to you that there\u2019s light at the end of the tunnel and next year is going to be better. We\u2019re not seeing any relief in terms of funding any time soon, so that\u2019s our reality. So, going forward I think we\u2019ve got a good process and we\u2019ll do our very best to mitigate the impact on students but we\u2019re really now getting backed into a corner.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Camosun College board of governors recently approved a $114-million balanced budget for fiscal year 2014-15, with no cancellation of programs. There had been concern amongst programs such as the Music Professional Studies program, University Transfer, and the Early Learning and Care program that they would either face significant reductions or be cancelled entirely. Camosun […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9001,"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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9040","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=9040"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9042,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9040\/revisions\/9042"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}