UVic halts new hires amid deficit
CTV
The University of Victoria's campus is again buzzing with students, but a lack of international students during the pandemic means tuition revenue is down. The school blames the decline on a hangover from COVID-19, as well as inflation, a housing shortage and delays processing international visas.
Hope Armstrong is a fourth-year student in the marine biology program. She says classroom instructors are already stretched thin.
"In the labs, there's always shortages of TAs and profs are always overloading their classes trying to compensate," said Armstrong on Monday.
The school blames the decline in international students on a hangover from COVID-19, as well as inflation, a housing shortage and delays processing international visas.
The university is dealing with a deficit of $17 million and has asked for campus-wide budget cuts of six per cent. It is also imposing sweeping limitations on new hires, both for academic and non-academic positions.
"We’ve taken immediate steps to control expenses, including a pause and review on all new hiring," the university said in a statement. "This includes hiring only in critical or high-priority positions in the short term and looking for areas to reduce some expenses beyond that."
Multiple students who CTV News spoke with expressed concern that the school was implementing a temporary halt on hiring new staff.
It’s not just students being impacted. Employees say putting the brakes on most new hires, along with potentially a halt on buying new equipment, will hurt.
Kirk Mercer is the president of the local CUPE union, which has approximately 900 full- and part-time employees at UVic.
