In an article for the Nanaimo News Bulletin, retired Vancouver Island University Professor Don Alexander laments how cuts at VIU have changed the institution. Alexander describes the university’s development over the last two decades, highlighting both its growth and expansion into graduate programming and the headwinds it and other BC universities have faced. He asserts that VIU and other universities have been “starved” by decades of underfunding, the ongoing tuition cap in British Columbia, and the federal international student cap. As a result, Alexander explains that VIU has lost most of its graduate programming, ended community-focused initiatives like ElderCollege, and suffered a “massive loss of institutional memory” through layoffs and staff departures.
