$176M sought for skills training

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This article was published 16/2/2012 (3266 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba industries require 6,000 skilled construction workers and Red River College is really eager to train them -- there's just the outstanding matter of $176 million.

That's what it would cost to build an enormous skilled trades and technology centre on the Notre Dame campus that would train 1,000 students a year to feed the province's hungry economy, RRC president Stephanie Forsyth told the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce on Thursday.

"This would be the most significant postsecondary education project in Manitoba history," Forsyth said.

The Selinger government has promised $60 million, said Forsyth, but RRC has to raise the rest through a capital campaign.

"We need your support," said Forsyth.

Manitoba expects 6,000 skilled construction workers to retire by 2018, just about how long it would take to build three phases of the proposed training centre in a best-case scenario, Forsyth said.

"It's a big vision," she said, but it's less than half the $385 million the Southern Alberta Institution of Technology has spent on a similar facility.

RRC will introduce Manitoba's first post-secondary training course for the funeral industry this coming September, she added.

"We are not your father's trade school," Forsyth said. RRC is as much about training young people for jobs yet to come than it is about educating for the existing trades, she said.

"We are striving to anticipate those needs with you."

Going to college is "not a second choice, a third choice, it's a choice" alongside university, Forsyth declared.

An aboriginal woman who came to Winnipeg after many years as an educator in northern British Columbia, Forsyth told the chamber RRC is undergoing a "paradigm shift" around aboriginal education that requires the college to shed longtime beliefs about how schools should be run.

Aboriginal young people continue to be underserved in post-secondary education, she said: "We have not come as far as we must."

That means much more than boosting enrolment or paying lip service, Forsyth emphasized.

"It means the inclusion of aboriginal knowledge" and cutlure into every aspect of the college, from curricula to the design of buildings, she said.

"It won't happen if we don't move beyond trying to fit the aboriginal person into the mainstream," she said.

But RRC is also moving into global education for a global economy, said Forsyth, who left Thursday night for China, where she will develop deals for joint programs with Chinese schools. RRC already has program partnerships in China on hotel management and power engineering.

The college has 400 international students but is aiming to enrol 2,500 foreign students, which will require affordable housing, she said.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca