25 April 2008
Nanaimo is Now a University Town; Malaspina College Becomes Vancouver Island University.
Posted by Ryan Coffey under: Nanaimo Profile and Events .
The big news was announced yesterday when Premier Gordon Campbell came to town. It comes at a time when we’ve just had $18,000,000 pumped into the local economy for improvements to the airport, a dock for cruise ships downtown, projects at the coll… uh… university and more from the provincial government in a period of about six weeks. Not to metion the new conference centre which is set to open this summer in the heart of downtown. Nanaimo is growing like mad already and making it the home of the main campus for B.C.’s newest university promises to be yet another big boost for Nanaimo.
I hope that this announcement will change things for the colle… (there I go again) University. As the economy has been so good this past while, there have been so many jobs that enrollment is way down. The result is a lot of talk of layoffs for staff there and from what I’ve from friends working there a couple have already happened. Some of my favourite people are working there and I would hate to see them have to find new jobs even in this job climate.
Hopefully enrollment will increase as future students are less likely to feel the need to move to get the education they want.
And here is the link to the announcement on the col… (sigh) university’s website. Actually, you may notice that they too are confused about what to call it as there are a few different names in their article. :p
The announcement on the Vancouver Island University website.
As someone who started to go to college there and had to transfer way out to St. Francis Xavier (in Nova Scotia) to finish my degree, let me be another voice offering congratulations to the “new” university!
Ryan Coffey