From Dr. Maggie Matear, President & CEO, Selkirk College
Over the last few months, Selkirk College leadership has been addressing the impacts of recent changes to federal immigration policy. We anticipate these changes will result in a 60 to 85 per cent reduction in the number of international students at Selkirk College over the next few years.
Our priority is to navigate these external challenges while fulfilling our core mission. We will continue to provide excellent, accessible education that meets workforce demands and ensures the college's long-term viability.
The fiscal reality of the current environment requires that we make some strategic adjustments. We'll begin to implement these changes over the coming months.
- Conduct a comprehensive budget review across all areas, services and departments, looking at scenarios that explore what it would mean to reduce overall expenses by $9 million.
- Implement more operational efficiencies, such as adjusting service offerings and organizational activities and shifting our business processes where possible.
- Reduce our physical footprint to optimize resources.
- Implement voluntary workforce reduction programs, which we have already begun through canvassing processes.
- Examine the potential for more revenue generation opportunities; however, as we will have little investment capacity over the next little while, we will explore this further once we've moved into a more financially stable position.
We realize that many will be looking for more detail on these changes. We're sharing as much as we can when we can. We have to make sure we're not compromising confidentiality, that we're following our communication protocols, and that we're adhering to collective and employment agreement terms and conditions.
We're committed to meeting the current challenges in a way that will help strengthen Selkirk College in the long run. We're going to position ourselves for success in this new landscape and ensure we continue to inspire generations of changemakers through relevant, inventive and sustainable education.
The college's new strategic plan Land, Learning & Legacy: Our Path to 2040 charts a course to forging a distinctive identity in the Canadian college sector as a destination for learning grounded in a sense of land and place. The actions in our strategic plan will improve our ability to recruit domestic students from outside our region as well as within. Growing domestic enrolment will offset the impacts of lower international student enrolment in the future.
We want to be clear that these adjustments will not impact currently enrolled students, who will continue to receive full support through to graduation. We remain committed to maintaining quality academic programming that is supported by robust services.
Leadership will continue working closely with supervisors, union executives, employees, student representatives and our community to implement these strategic adjustments thoughtfully and transparently.
Dr. Maggie Matear
Selkirk College President & CEO
