Alberta minister offers to help relocate university staff

Alberta’s Advanced Education minister says he is willing to help Athabasca University with whatever it wants – including money – to relocate 500 employees to the small town that’s the school’s namesake. But he says the university has not stepped up, writes Dean Bennett for The Canadian Press.

“I’ve offered to provide any kind of assistance that the university needs. They haven’t asked for any,” Demetrios Nicolaides said in an interview. Nicolaides said his department previously asked the university for a concrete plan by 30 June to expand the physical presence of the school in the town of 2,800 people.

Nicolaides’ comments come as the standoff between him and university president Peter Scott becomes increasingly confrontational, set against a looming deadline that holds the fate of the school in the balance. It is Canada’s largest online university and was moved from Edmonton to Athabasca, 145 kilometres north of the provincial capital, almost 40 years ago to provide distance learning and help rural economic growth. Therein lies the rub. Over time, the school’s on-site staff has dwindled as more began working remotely. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated that shift and now only a quarter of the 1,200 staff work on-site.
Full report on the CBC News site