[URBAN NOTE] "Laurentian University to shut campus in Barrie, Ont."

[rfmcdonald]

The Toronto Star's Steve Russell examines the aftermath of Sudbury-based Laurentian University's decision to shut down its satellite campus in the southern Ontario city of Barrie, operated with Georgian College. There's much to be said about this, but the most important thing is my lack of understanding as to why, exactly, the Ontario government didn't allow Laurentian to open up a full campus. If there's need for university-stream education in Barrie, on the northernmost fringe of the Greater Toronto Area, why not make it readily available?

An abrupt decision by Laurentian University to shut down its campus in Barrie, Ont., has left more than 200 students unable to finish their degrees in the city where they began.

Laurentian will close down the Barrie programs, long held at Georgian College, in May 2017 — except for its social work students, who will be allowed to stay until they graduate in 2019.

Their special status, which Laurentian said honours the work placements they have in the community, has sparked outrage by students in other programs, who jammed a protest meeting this week with the university president to demand the same chance to finish their degrees in Barrie.

“It shouldn’t matter what program you’re in; you should be able to finish your degree where you started. Laurentian has an obligation to see us through our four years of education in Barrie,” said political science student Jeremy Ross, president of the Laurentian Students’ Union, who said some 150 students jammed into the meeting “and they were pretty angry."

[. . .]

Laurentian president Dominic Giroux said the board of governors unanimously decided to withdraw from Barrie over recommendations from a provincial report that future Laurentian arts students in Barrie be taught in the first two years of their program by Georgian College instructors, not the university’s own professors. The report, by former cabinet minister John Gerretsen, also advised limiting the space Laurentian could use at the community college to less than one-third what the university wanted.

The report was commissioned by Queen’s Park last year after it turned down Laurentian’s bid for a new stand-alone campus in the boom town of Barrie. Giroux said the university was leaving Barrie “over a difference in vision.”