Last year, Aurora College was on its knees. In six years time it will be a gleaming jewel of knowledge brightening the skyline of the territory's capital.
That will be the outcome if Education Minister Caroline Cochrane can convince her cabinet colleagues to follow the advice of a long-awaited foundational review of the college that tells the government to pack up the main campus in Fort Smith and move it Yellowknife and re-brand it as a polytechnic university.
The report comes after a tumultuous year that began with the GNWT demanding $1.89 million in cuts, which was reciprocated by the decision to cut two of the colleges' flagship programs – its bachelor of education and diploma in social work – followed by a hue and outcry that culminated with the firing of the college's board of directors and the reassignment of Cochrane's predecessor, Alfred Moses, to a different portfolio.
Cochrane was “ecstatic” with the report's recommendations. This was not the case in Fort Smith where more than 100 residents met in horror last week to discuss the prospect of a gutted campus.
The report paints a rather unflattering portrait of the town as one too small to serve as a sophisticated centre of learning, where there are not enough part-time jobs nor places to party. Modern day students and millennials attending college in Fort Smith aren't finding the “social experience” they're looking for outside of study hours, the report suggests.
News flash: Yellowknife is not Daytona Beach. It is certainly larger and undoubtedly there are more opportunities for employment and daycare in the capital but we question the wisdom of moving an established campus and building another elsewhere when the original impetus supposedly was to save money.
This is the report's greatest flaw. It contains nary a word about how much this would all cost.
The government might as well paint the walls with gold after offering zero per cent increases to GNWT workers following two years of acrimonious contract negotiations. That's how the university project will be viewed after telling unionized staff it has no money to offer wage hikes.
Moving the campus to the city has other potential repercussions.
Mayor Lynn Napier Buckley told those in attendance at the June 5 meeting that should the new school's presence in the town be reduced to a regional centre with a focus on trades, upwards of 70 positions could be cut.
This would be a devastating blow for a town where there are barely more than 1,000 people with jobs. Cochrane says the number is closer to six but like the absent university cost figures she has presented nothing to back that up.
The proposed university is clearly an exciting prospect but the minister clearly let her jubilation get ahead of her. Aurora College undoubtedly has its problems but the priority ought to be to first examine how to fix the problems in Fort Smith before moving the whole shebang to Yellowknife.
For better or worse, the town is the NWT's education hub. It has been for four decades.
Making Aurora into a university based in Fort Smith may be just the ticket it needs to revitalize its status with real credibility as a territorial learning centre – providing its expansion doesn't bankrupt the territory.
We're sure Cochrane will have plenty to hear at the next meeting in Fort Smith, June 11.