Ottawa's Algonquin College is coming off a rough stretch of cuts, but its president and CEO, Claude Brulé, says he sees real opportunity ahead in the skilled trades and in the college's defence partnerships.
What was cut
The list includes journalism, music industry arts, hospitality, culinary arts and bartending. The college also closed its Perth campus, which is currently for sale, along with its downtown corporate training centre.
The cuts came despite a $6.4-billion injection of provincial funding into the post-secondary sector, a detail that underscores how widespread the pressure has been across Ontario's colleges, not just at Algonquin.
Brulé didn't downplay the human cost of the decisions. "We're in a people business, so every time you make decisions, you know that it's impacting people, it's impacting livelihoods," he said.
Where Algonquin is leaning in
While some programs are winding down, Brulé is pointing to two areas where the Ottawa college sees demand outpacing supply: skilled trades and defence-sector partnerships.
On the trades side, Brulé cited one program with a wait list of 1,500 students, a number that speaks to how much appetite there is for hands-on training in Ottawa and the surrounding region even as other parts of the college shrink.
On the defence side, Algonquin is building on a relationship that goes back two decades. Next year, the college will celebrate 20 years of partnership with the Canadian Armed Forces School of Military Mapping. That kind of long-running tie to the military gives the college a foothold in a sector that continues to need trained workers, regardless of what's happening elsewhere in the post-secondary system.
The Ottawa angle
At the same time, the trades wait list and the defence partnership point to where Ottawa's job market still has unmet demand.
What comes next
The college has not said whether more program suspensions are possible or when a buyer might be found for the Perth campus. For now, Brulé's message is that the cuts, however painful, are meant to free up resources for the areas where Algonquin sees the clearest path to filling seats and, eventually, jobs.
Sources: Ottawa Business Journal
