Fort McMurray Forum

Keyano College is calling it a transformational budget.

The Board of Governors today, presented a $79 million balanced fiscal plan for 2012/2013, a document approved in camera three weeks ago.

President and CEO Dr. Kevin Nagel says the government has made it very clear that their programming should concentrate on addressing a shortage of skilled industry workers.

"If you look at sort of how they're organizing enterprise and advanced education now, they've got everything in there that provides them the tools to be abel to address some of the issues, because immigration is in there, training, and all the various things that you need really to look at to addressing the issues in a more of a systemic way, really the ultimate goal here is to try to maximize the benefit of the resource that we've been blessed with," said Nagel who says the college is looking allocate resources in accordance with demand and reduce reliance on provincial funding.

Adding that  millions of dollars in industry funding received this year could not prevent recent staffing cuts.

 "It becomes an of utilization, more than it does an issue of cost, so if you have low enrollment programs that have one or two students in them, then they become unsustainable, so the question I would ask you is do you want spend the same amount of money dealing with a program that you have two students in, when you can actually serve 30 students in another program," said Nagel.

 The college initially cited budget constraints and chronic low enrollement for recent staffing cuts, however, revenue increased 7.5 per cent and overall enrollment soared by 27 per cent.

Keyano has signalled a collaboration via the municipality with the newly-minted Wood Buffalo Arts Council that will allow the committee to facilitate community-based programming on campus, without changing the ownership status of existing facilities.

The council will be conducting a demand-based study this Fall, assessing the programs and facilities required by the local Arts community.