BURNABY, B.C. (CUP) – British Columbia’s Okanagan University College will be split in two, the provincial government announced March 17, but students at the school aren’t sure how the change will impact their educations.
OUC’s North Kelowna campus is slated to become part of the University of B.C., while the rest of the school’s campuses will form a new Okanagan College next year. The province says the move will make 5,500 more spaces available to post-secondary students in the Okanagan region by 2010.
But the student union representing the more than 5,000 strong attending OUC’s two Kelowna campuses maintains that although students have serious questions and concerns about the changes to their school, they haven’t been consulted.
“We’re quite frustrated with the entire process because we feel like we’ve been completely ignored,” said Karina Frisque, president of the Okanagan University College Students Association in Kelowna.
Frisque said she didn’t have much luck getting answers at the press conference held to announce the decision because Premier Gordon Campbell and Minister of Advanced Education Shirley Bond spoke only with the media and refused to talk to students. UBC administrators did discuss the takeover with students, she said, but couldn’t offer much in the way of details.
“We can’t get excited about this proposal,” Frisque said, “if we don’t even know what we stand to gain, and what we stand to lose.”
The University of B.C., Okanagan will share a president and board of governors with UBC’s Vancouver campus, but will have its own senate. The arrangement is based on the University of California system. Students at both campuses will pay the same tuition fees and receive the same degrees.
The student union is concerned that there won’t be adequate student representation on the new university’s governing bodies. It’s worried that students in the middle of their programs could be affected if requirements are changed to meet UBC standards.
The government didn’t fairly consider a proposal to turn OUC into a full, independent university, Frisque said.
In a telephone interview from Kelowna, UBC president Martha Piper admitted students hadn’t been consulted about the takeover, but they will be now that it’s official.
“We’ll be consulting with students as we move forward to try to develop the programs that make sense, and involve students in that,” Piper said. “But up until now, this has been a government decision, and we put a proposal in and we were waiting for the government to make a decision.”
Piper said the new university would be able to offer more courses than OUC. The UBC president also said Okanagan students would benefit from a bigger library and new residences.
UBC Okanagan will offer undergraduate and graduate programs. It is expected to serve 7,500 students by 2009.
Frisque said that while it’s important to create more spaces for students at universities, she’s worried that without increased government funding they could cost students through higher tuition fees or larger class sizes.
