When you want the real story, you have to ask the right questions to the right person.
As a story broke this week about another update at Loyalist College, I reached out to the management team and was quickly granted a meeting with President Mark Kirkpatrick.
Mark has a lengthy history at Loyalist and knows the college inside and out. The update he delivered was comprehensive. The answers he gave me were direct and complete.
Here, in plain language, is what you need to know.
Despite massive financial pressures caused by a huge reduction in international students, Loyalist is on the road to recovery.
The operating deficit will be erased in two years. All four main campus locations (Belleville, Port Hope, Bancroft, and Tyendinaga) will remain open, with some satellite locations like the one in downtown Belleville being closed.
There will be no privatization of the college, which is here to stay. It will be here next year, in five years and in 50 years, as Loyalist College – an exceptional standalone educational institution vital to the area, local families and businesses.
There are still major challenges in the short-term, some of which will only be understood after they complete a voluntary leave program, but a plan is in place to refocus and keep Loyalist moving forward. That’s not rumour, or conjecture, or politics. That’s the facts straight from the people making decisions that no one wants to make about an institution that they all love dearly and want to see prosper.
I’m Paul Martin and that’s what I see looking Beyond the Headlines.
