College in dark about provincial funding, tuition cap

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/10/2016 (3268 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

These are certainly heady times for Red River College.

One in six students is indigenous, graduates from the college’s trades feed the Manitoba economy, the skilled trade and technology building is nearing completion, and there are 900 students taking RRC courses and English training in China who may end up coming here.

However, like every other public education institution, college president Paul Vogt has no idea what’s coming financially from the PC government.

Vogt said he expects there’ll be some change to the legislated cap on tuition increases, but he doesn’t know what it will be.

He spoke to a Manitoba Chambers of Commerce meeting Wednesday.

“The operating grant, we still don’t know. Obviously, we still don’t know about support for capital,” said Vogt, adding he gets along with Education Minister Ian Wishart.

Vogt wouldn’t discuss plans by Finance Minister Cameron Friesen to reduce 112 civil service management positions to save $10 million.

Vogt said he can see where Friesen wants to go with public-sector salaries.

“We can get the overall message. Collective bargaining is coming,” Vogt said. “Right now, the spotlight is on the University of Manitoba. Ours is a year out.”

The U of M’s faculty association is voting this week on giving its bargaining team a strike mandate. The professors want 6.9 per cent on a one-year deal; the university has offered seven per cent over four years.

Friesen has told the Free Press the eight per cent over five years that provincial engineers bargained for was more than what Manitoba can afford.

Vogt told the chambers 16 per cent of the student body is indigenous, a percentage that’s growing. There’s a campus on Peguis First Nation, and at the campuses in Portage la Prairie and Selkirk, “the majority of students taking courses are indigenous,” he said.

Vogt said the college has applied for another new building under a federal infrastructure program, which, if approved, would require the province to contribute — but he wouldn’t elaborate.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca