Recession deals "potentially fatal" blow to TWU

University taking emergency measures

By Frank Stirk  |  BC Correspondent

Jonathan Raymond, president of Trinity Western University

LANGLEY, BC—Trinity Western University president Jonathan Raymond does not mince words when talking about the major problems facing the school. "TWU is not well," he told major donors in his annual state of the university address in late April. In fact, he characterized its condition as "chronic and potentially fatal."

But Raymond also tried at length to assure his listeners that all the necessary steps are being taken to see the institution through this crisis.

"In hindsight, I might have toned it down a little bit," he says now. "But we are facing a crisis—and it would become fatal if we did nothing. So it was getting their attention to say, 'This is serious stuff and…here's what we're doing.'"

When Raymond took over in 2006, he was faced with falling enrolment and a shrinking donor base. His administration managed to turn both crises around, but they could not prevent the slow bleed of American students as the Canadian dollar gained strength. Over four years the school lost 600 students from the U.S.

Trinity Western's tuition—"the most expensive in Canada," says Raymond—accounts for 85 per cent of the university's operating revenues.

"I am concerned that we're pricing ourselves out of affordability for a large sector of the Christian community," says TWU political scientist John Redekop. "It's a conundrum for…a school that gets no government grants."

To make matters worse, TWU's recovery plans were derailed when the recession hit last fall, forcing it to impose budget cuts, a hiring freeze and a suspension of all salary increases.

"There's a pulling-in-the-belt, finding savings of up to $3.65 million that we've estimated we'll be able to do. In the next two years, we will let go of 54 people. We've also looked at programs that need to be cut out or merged with other things. And we're pursuing additional revenue streams and opportunities," says Raymond.

Those include a new school of nursing, a new campus in Richmond set to open in 2012, and a two-year program for older adults wishing to complete their university degrees.

"We are on top of a plan," Raymond says, "that we are confident [will move] us to a preferred and sustainable future. And really, the silver lining is that I fully expect we're going to emerge even stronger."

Dependent on U.S. students

Justin Cooper, president of Redeemer University College in Ancaster, Ontario, believes TWU is virtually "unique" within the Christian postsecondary community in being so dependent on U.S. students. "We have very few, probably 15 or 20 out of 860," he says.

"We don't get a lot of American students," adds Brian Stiller, president of Tyndale University and Seminary in Toronto. "We live next to New York and it doesn't have the Christian population. And we don't have the north-south flow like you do in B.C."

Cooper, who also chairs the board of Christian Higher Education Canada, says while most schools may not currently be facing the same problems as Trinity Western, "There definitely is stress out there….It has been more difficult in the last three or four years for Christian universities and Bible colleges to attract the enrolment that they're used to."

But some worry that if the recession persists into the fall and the start of a new academic year, TWU won't be the only one facing financial hard times.

"The economic crisis in the U.S. is making loans and credit...suspect, so we don't know how that's going to translate in September as yet," says Rod Wilson, president of Regent College in Vancouver, whose enrolment is about one-third American. "You never actually know until the day of admissions whether they're going to be there or not."

Redekop shares that concern. "I take my hat off to [Raymond]. He presented the picture clearly, starkly," he says. "But if, when September rolls around, enrolment declines and interest rates go up, that is a pincer movement."

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