University of the Arctic Sees Funding Cuts

Photo courtesy Yukon White Light/Flickr Creative Commons

Would-be students in Canada’s far North might be left out in the cold. The University of the Arctic was recently told it would receive less funding from the Federal Government, forcing them to scale back their Canadian offerings.

Earlier this year, Ottawa informed the university that their funding would be cut from more than $700,000 to a greatly reduced $150,000.

Meanwhile, supporters of the university say that educational access for aboriginal students in northern communities has never been more important, and the cuts come at the worst possible time.

“You have a lot of aboriginal students in the North and they don’t do as well when they come to a large southern institution. They will be more successful taking these courses online in their own communities,” said Hayley Hesseln, the consortium’s dean of undergraduate admissions, based at the University of Saskatchewan.

The University of the Arctic (UArctic) is a cooperative network of universities, colleges, and other organizations committed to higher education and research in the North. Since 2001, they have helped over 10,000 students get trained via distance education. They have students in arctic countries such as Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States.

The government claims there hasn’t been enough Canadian interest in the school to necessitate the amount of funding they have contributed. Since 2006, Canada has graduated eight Canadian UArctic students, while Canadian taxpayers have contributed $3.8 million between 2004 and 2010.