Pearl Lorentzen
Local Journalism
Initiative Reporter

A cut in federal funding to the Government of Alberta will mean Northern Lakes College can accept about 200-250 fewer students for pre-college courses.

“It impacts the number of opportunities in foundational learning,” says Glenn Mitchell, Northern Lakes College president, regarding a decrease in federal funding.

The reason is most students who take these types of courses pay for it with federal grants, Mitchell adds.

The courses cost about $1,000.

A CBC news article about the funding change says that the money is connected with labour market transfer agreements (LMTAs). Over the summer, the Government of Canada decreased the amount of money transferred $71 million less to the Government of Alberta, affecting multiple areas including Foundational Learning Assistance. The program pays for the tuition of students who are completing academic upgrading or other pre-college courses. These students are not eligible for federal or provincial student loans.

“For the last few years,” Mitchell adds, “we’ve (NLC has) been over 500 students in that area.”

NLC had a 50 per cent drop in funding, says Mitchell. However, this works out to a 60 per cent drop in revenue.

“It’s a pretty big hit for us,” he says.

Mitchell estimates it will mean 200-250 fewer students for courses at NLC.

NLC offers a few pre-college courses that are affected including academic upgrading and foundational learning.

Academic upgrading is Grade 6 to high school.

Foundational learning “is lower than that,” says Mitchell. “In working with CALP (Community Adult Learning Program), we start as low as literacy and numeracy.”

“There’s a gap between where students come to us,” says Mitchell, “and where they want to go.”

A hypothetical example he gives is someone wanting to enter the community-based bachelor of education program, but who left school in Grade 10.

“There’s a gap that’s difficult to fill when the funding is not there,” says Mitchell.

Over the years, NLC has had students go through foundational learning or academic upgrading to achieve a diploma or a degree. Mitchell knows of one student who now has a masters.

“It would be nice to see a positive change there,” says Mitchell, mentioning that thousands of education institutions had a decrease in funding.

“There’s so many people that need that funding,” he adds, “and need that education.”

The federal funding doesn’t affect the regular college courses.