Aanii, Boozhoo, Kwe Kwe, Wachay!
The Laurentian University Board of Governors has approved a balanced $161M budget for 2019-20. This represents a growth of 0.2% over last year’s budget and eliminates the $4.4M deficit we had to run in 2018-19 while investing in priorities outlined in our 2018-23 strategic plan.
We face a challenging fiscal context, amplified by a series of unforeseen pressures which has thus far been overcome by our collaborative efforts on a Long-Term Sustainability Plan. This hard work and difficult decisions resulted in savings of $6.1 million for 2018-19, and a further $10.1 million in revenues, efficiencies and savings for 2019-20.
Take a moment to think about that. More than 16 million dollars saved and earned. This at a time when we have climbed to the top in terms of research income, we have had the highest post-graduation employment rate for 7 of the last 8 years, and retention of students from first to second year has climbed to more than 85%... the highest in 5 years. Some of our amazing research centres have celebrated 10, 20 and 30 year anniversaries and our faculty and students continue to earn national awards. We continue to impact our world in the cultural, social, environmental, economic and technological fields. We have a lot to be proud of.
To balance our budget, we have made some difficult cuts. We have seen long time members of the Administration leave Laurentian, and we have had to limit hiring to strictly essential positions. Over 60 changes were made to LUSU and LUAPS positions which has achieved efficiencies. Every unit, including the library, has had to absorb cuts and community input and our Strategic Plan priorities helped shape the changes to minimize impacts. At the same time, we are finding creative ways to do things more efficiently and strategically grow revenues. We still have some work to do to balance in 2020-21 in the face of the tuition cuts, but we have set up a plan to ensure Laurentian is sustainable.
We continue to work with government to ensure provincial funding is supportive of our critical work in the region and those conversations are progressing well.
There is an urge in difficult times like this to turn on each other with accusations that the other is not doing enough or complaints that we are being particularly targeted. Our financial situation has forced us to look in all parts of the university to achieve the savings needed to return to financial sustainability. We have tried to protect the activities supporting our core work while recognizing that no cut we make is benign in its impacts. There is amazing brain power in this institution and we are capable of finding a way to emerge from these difficult years strong and focused on our core mission of changing lives through our teaching, research and community engagement. It is clear that to achieve this we will need to think different about what we are doing.
The path forward means focussing on three critical pillars: Strategic growth, student success, and transformation.
Strategic growth means working together to ensure that we attract students to programs where we have capacity and which support the goals of our strategic plan.
Student success needs an integrated, whole-institution approach to ensuring our student's success. This supports a key value that emerged strongly from our strategic plan consultations: When our students succeed, we succeed.
Transformation rethinks some of our academic programming to ensure that we can provide rich learning opportunities that help our students achieve their ambitions and do it within the resources we are likely to be working with for the foreseeable future. The same goes for redesigning some of our administrative and support programs. We have immense potential. Laurentian is in demand on a global scale. We need to grow and change to meet that demand.
And this isn’t just about money. It’s about making sure that as we succeed, we aren’t sacrificing our health and wellness.
We have held an unprecedented consultation process as the budget has been developed. It was designed to ensure the Laurentian community is not just informed, but more importantly creates an opportunity for everyone to be heard about the path we are on and how best to proceed. We will continue to hold town hall meetings to update you on the progress and ways to engage with our plans for strategic growth, student success and transformation, so stay tuned and engage where you can.
Our strategic plan says that we are inspired by the North. Northerners are resilient and resourceful and I am confident that we will weather this storm if we come together. That is the Laurentian I know. That is the Laurentian I love.
Maamwii, Ensemble, Together.