Inside Capilano University’s Nat and Flora Bosa Centre for Film and Animation, students are buzzing. Partly from caffeine, partly from their level of activity. Much like in the careers they’re destined for, students in the dozen degree, diploma and certificate programs require long days and nights on set, in the editing suite or at a mixing board.
At the high end, four years of tuition in the motion picture arts degree program can reach almost $60,000 but you won’t hear a peep of complaint from alumni. Some of the programs boast a near-100 per cent employment rate among graduates and those who leave before graduating tend to do so because they’ve already started careers in their field.
The centre thoroughly impressed Andrew Wilkinson, the province’s minister of advanced education for the last 13 months, during a recent tour.
“This is the first time I’ve been in this Bosa facility and it is remarkable,” he said. “It’s got state-of-the-art equipment. It’s an almost-new building. It’s full of energy and vitality and students who really feel like they’re getting a great experience,” he said.
It’s a shining example of what the school is capable of and it’s something Cap’s leadership is eager to build on. But it’s only part of the story.
Conflict theory
Capilano has struggled with being the second-lowest funded of B.C.’s 25 post-secondary schools. Budget shortfalls followed by painful cuts have become routine.
In 2013, administrators found themselves short $1.3 million. After much controversy, the university’s board of governors balanced the budget by cutting a swath of programs that included computer science, commerce, studio arts and textile arts as well as arts and science transfer courses.
That prompted student protests and a lawsuit from the faculty who successfully argued in court the cuts were illegal because they hadn’t been made with adequate consultation required by the University Act. The faculty later called on university president Kris Bulcroft to resign, as did retired faculty members who accused the school of losing its vision and original mandate to serve the North Shore. The year 2015 saw a faculty strike at exam time that turned into a de facto power struggle over layoffs and by extension, which programs the school would offer. That was followed by a staff strike. Then the university was found to have violated an art instructor’s academic freedom after staff seized and cut apart an effigy of Bulcroft that was made to protest program cuts.
It was a period many at the school were glad to put behind them. Things went relatively quiet. Administration hoped that 2016’s budget would not only be balanced but possibly even in surplus. Then, last week, notice went out to the campus community that there was yet another shortfall, this time about $1.5 million.
History 101
There’s been no shortage of finger-pointing over the years, but all roads seem to lead back to 2008 when Capilano College became Capilano University.
Planning for the transition had been in the works for months but at the last minute, the province reneged on $6.3 million in transitional funding and $6 million in annual base funding, leaving Cap’s leadership with a take-it-or-leave-it offer. In order to stay competitive with other new special-purpose teaching universities such as Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Vancouver Island University and University of the Fraser Valley, they took it. Gordon Campbell visited for a confetti ceremony and the school got on with its new mandate, still the second lowest funded post-secondary school in B.C., as it had been since the early 1980s. Only Langara College gets less on a per-student operating grant basis from the province.
“When Capilano College converted to Capilano University, one of the terms of the arrangement was that the cost profile would remain the same,” Wilkinson said, during a recent sit-down with the North Shore News.
That fact wasn’t made public until 2014 when it came up in a report released under freedom of information legislation at the request of former Capilano president Greg Lee.
Factoring in inflation, negotiated wage increases and a two per cent cap on tuition increases, it’s left Cap stumbling from one budget shortfall into the next.
Political science
In 2016, Capilano University will receive $6,575 per full-time equivalent student space from the province (that number remains the same even if the university is below capacity – at the moment only 79 per cent of the funded positions are actually filled by students). Kwantlen’s grant, by contrast, was closer to $6,976. The provincial average is a little less than $10,000.
Cap’s poor-cousin plight is something that’s landed on the desks of successive NDP advanced education critics, including David Eby. Eby had a strange ally in West Vancouver-Capilano Liberal MLA Ralph Sultan, both of whom went to bat for Capilano, repeatedly asking the ministry for the formula used to set per-student operating grants but neither were successful.
Eventually, Sultan gave up and concluded there was no formula. He continued to lobby within his own caucus for more funding for Cap.
Wilkinson confirmed there is indeed no formula.
“We don’t use formulas because communities vary. If you try to set up a welding program in Fort St. John for the same price it would be in Kelowna, that would not work because the cost base for each locale is different,” he said
Speaking to Capilano’s basement-level funding, Wilkinson said, because of its program offerings, Capilano is less expensive to run compared to colleges and universities with more technical programming like engineering or aircraft mechanics.
“When programs are more academic like Capilano or Langara, the cost base is much lower and so we adjust their budget accordingly,” he said.
As for how Cap should deal with its chronic need to cut in order to meet its provincially mandated balanced budget, that’s nothing the ministry manages, Wilkinson said, nor is what courses a school should offer.
“Each institution decides what it will offer. We don’t dictate to institutions what the academic content is because that’s what they have boards of governors for. What we do do is fund the institutions to the appropriate levels so they can deliver the programs they deem to be fit. Given the exigencies of budgets everywhere in the world, universities and colleges adjust themselves to their financial means. Capilano has done a pretty good job of managing within its means and we’re quite pleased actually with its financial performance.”
North Vancouver-Seymour MLA Jane Thornthwaite said she too is proud of the way Capilano perseveres.
“Cap is doing really well. They are one of the stars, I think, with regard to provincial universities because they consistently meet budget constraints,” she said. “And yes, they do have to struggle, but they not only get the regular advanced education funding but they also get one-time top-ups for specific programs.”
That’s something Thornthwaite credited to lobbying from the North Shore’s MLAs.
And Cap’s results also speak for themselves, she said.
“What we’ve been told and what post-secondary institutions have been told is to refine the programs that they’re doing so the kids who graduate are job-ready. Cap has been doing that,” she said.
Current NDP advanced education critic Kathy Corrigan has taken up the job of trying to push the government to fund Cap to a point it won’t have to budget by hatchet.
“When you’re starting in an unfavourable position, like Capilano, and then you had stagnant or decreased budgets, that translates into program cuts and that’s what’s happened,” she said. “They’re making decisions about program cuts that don’t have to do necessarily with whether or not that program is useful, whether it is a good program, whether the graduates are needed. They’re making the decisions on the basis of getting rid of high-cost programs.”
Increasingly, Corrigan said she is receiving complaints about schools getting around the two per cent maximum tuition hike by either adding additional fees technically not considered tuition, or by shutting down and restarting a program with a new name.
Cap doesn’t have such a fee scheme, according to Rick Gale, Cap’s vice-president academic, and there is a threshold of necessary change to a program that must be met before new tuition rates can be applied.
“We’re constantly in a process of retooling our programs to make them in alignment with the industries. When a program gets re-costed, it’s only because those changes have reached the 51 per cent level,” Gale said.
In either case, Corrigan said the responsibility rests with the government that put them in an untenable position in the first place.
“These are all workarounds that I don’t particularly blame the institutions for doing because the bottom line is, the provincial government is badly underfunding the post-secondary system and I do not understand that. Education is the best way for us to have a successful, prosperous economy,” she said.
Urban economics
Beyond the core funding issue, students have been crying out for some help on the housing front, said Zach Renwick, president of Capilano Students’ Union.
The lack of student residences on campus and the choking market rates for rent within commuting distance act as a deterrent for would-be students, Renwick said.
“I’m sure many more students would come to Cap but there’s just nowhere around, preferably for them to live by campus,” he said. “We’ve done a lot of research on housing insecurity and the low vacancy rates.”
The addition of residence, which would require capital funding from the province, would also help change the feel and identity of the campus, making it more appealing, Renwick added.
“The campus is kind of dead after classes end and as a student union, we’re always trying to build student life. If we had residences, it would help with that,” he said.
But, that too isn’t in the cards, Wilkinson said, mainly because Cap sits in an urban area where there is plenty of market housing.
“They might prefer to have housing on campus but it’s an issue of affordability. Can we afford to put up housing for them if they are in a position where they are already commuting?” he said.
“We would love to provide more housing on campuses if suddenly we had another $1 billion per year in our budget. That of course depends on the state of the economy and the state of revenue coming into government,” he said.
If money for dorms were to come available, schools in northern B.C. could be at the front of the line “because there’s nowhere else to live,” Wilkinson said.
Business basics
This year’s shortfall is mostly thanks to a 10 per cent drop in student enrolment and spike in costs for software, hardware and services that have been negotiated in US dollars.
Though there was some concern that last year’s labour disputes would dissuade students from enrolling, Bulcroft said it’s more a question of demographics.
“If you look at what you see happening throughout the Lower Mainland, in terms of the K-12 system, the demographics suggest there’s a decline in the school-age population in the Lower Mainland,” Bulcroft said. “Cap is not alone, by the way,” she added, noting schools around the region have had a similar drop in domestic admissions.
Declining enrolment is being felt mostly in the arts and sciences at Cap. That too is part of the trend in the Lower Mainland’s schools, Gale said.
It’s too soon to say how staff, faculty and the board will come up with $1.5 million in savings by the end of March. All options are on the table but faculty and administrators have both said operating budgets no longer have any fat to cut.
Cutting expenses is only part of the strategy to get out of perpetual budget shortfalls. The school is looking to boost its revenue, Bulcroft said.
“Lets face it. If government decides to adjust operating grants, you would hear a great cheer go up from the campus community, probably from our community in general. I realize the government has restrictions and commitments and maybe reasons why that isn’t going to happen immediately. We’re not sitting around waiting for government to adjust our operating grant,” she said.
Specifically, the goal is to woo back students by increasing space in its most successful programs, Gale said, like the ones in the Bosa Centre.
“We really are appealing to what the province is seeing as the important future for students coming out of post-secondary. It’s the creative industries, it’s tourism, it’s business, it’s legal studies. These are the programs that continue to be oversubscribed and these are the programs we’re going to continue to grow,” he said.
Capilano is also marketing itself to compete with other universities for international students, who pay much higher tuition than domestic students.
And there should be no reason for friction when it comes to schools actively courting more international students, Wilkinson said.
“There’s a misperception that international students displace domestic students. That is wrong. It is incorrect. What international students do is pay for spaces that were created for them and the surplus income they generate actually subsidizes the local origin students,” he said.
The province has a goal of increasing the number of international students by 20 per cent, up to 140,000 students.
Cap is also trying to retain more students, getting away from its reputation as a place for students to attend for a couple years before transferring to degree programs at a larger school.
Applied smarts
Despite the recent rough years and no promise of more funding in the future, Bulcroft and Wilkinson both express confidence the school remains well positioned and that its graduates face a bright future.
“One of my greatest privileges as president here at Cap has been the ability and opportunity to get to know the business community, industry, CEOs, people in the non-profits as well – and every conversation always leads me to conclude that Cap is on the right track. Because we’re really paying attention to what, I believe, employers need,” said Bulcroft, who is retiring in July.
“I think the North Shore should be very proud of this university.”
