For 20 years I worked at Vancouver Island University in a variety of capacities, mainly as a full-time faculty member in geography, master of community planning, and global studies. I am still affiliated with VIU as an honorary research associate in geography. During my tenure, Malaspina University College became VIU – a raft of ‘regional universities’ that were created in 2008 in different parts of the province. Even before that status, Malaspina had begun to create a few four-year degree programs rather than just being a two-year transfer college.
As a full-fledged university, it began to create graduate programs to supplement its undergraduate education. In these years, VIU became a high-quality university serving primarily students from central Vancouver Island, along with a significant number of international students, especially in its graduate programs, without losing its reputation for being a low-barrier institution for First Nations and other students who might need a leg up to succeed in their academic journey.
More recent administrations have argued that VIU grew too fast without costing out the long-term financial implications of new programs. That may be part of the problem, but as many have suggested, the province – under all parties – have starved institutions of higher learning of adequate resources for decades. In the case of the NDP, this is particularly hypocritical as they refuse to allow universities and colleges to raise their tuition.
This is exacerbated by the recent cap by the federal government on the number of international students allowed into the country. Because of systematic underfunding, universities and colleges – not just in B.C. – have come to depend on such students as they pay up to three times domestic tuition and have become the proverbial cash cow used to counteract this underfunding. Universities and colleges are not allowed to run deficits in B.C., but the NDP made an exception during the challenging years of the pandemic. And now they’re insisting that, in VIU’s case, it be eliminated within three years come hell or high water. The university has already cut massively and is still nowhere near meeting the province’s goal; it’s only 35 per cent of the way there. In the process, it has cut programs that were unique and gave it a distinctive identity and that served a regional, and even national, target audience – ElderCollege, its widely esteemed music program (including in jazz instruction), its master of community planning program which has trained hundreds of community and Indigenous planners, and even programs that give students essential job skills such as its two geographic information systems programs, amongst the only ones in the country.
Apart from its MBA, all of its graduate programs are now gone. It is regressing back to 2008 when it was purely an undergraduate institution. The concept of the ‘regional university,’ developed under the Liberals, was a good one but they did not provide them sufficient resources to succeed, hence setting them up for the current debacle.
Another consequence of all this turmoil is – given the large number of people fired, laid off, who have gone elsewhere, or taken early retirement – is the massive loss of institutional memory. Our president until a few weeks ago had two years of tenure; our new president has none.
For all of the staff, past and present, long affiliated with the institution, these are dark days indeed. When the process is through, VIU will be more of a Swiss cheese than a university. It’s a pity.
Don Alexander retired from the geography department in 2023 but remains affiliated with VIU. This submission reflects his views alone and not those of the department.
