Laurentian University cuts over 60 programs, fires professors due to insolvency issues

Laurentian University announced Monday it had cut over 60 academic programs, in turn laying off dozens of professors, as the publicly funded institution struggles with insolvency.

Nearly 60 undergraduate programs will be closed, 34 of which are in English and 24 are in French, as well as 11 graduate programs too.

Eric Sorensen has more on what the closure means for students, staff, businesses and the Northern Ontario community.


#GlobalNews

[matcam]

Being from university was having financial problems long before the pandemic. I graduated from this university years ago and let me tell you the quality of education and educators has really gone down hill.

[pedrothejerk]

The institutions get enough public funding. Most of them are bloated with useless programs and administrators. They need to look to the future and that Gender Studies/Sociology double major or the Masters in Diversity Training is not going to cut it.

[MrHammerman]

This is awesome news! Hope more schools go bankrupt soon so we can rebuild our Math's, REAL sciences, and History that isn't biased. Here's hoping!

[japp.]

great! major in math and science! not some silly stupid useless degress such as english literature, women's studies and 17th century french literature...unless you want to be unemployed and on welfare

[VikingMale]

Philosophy, Math, Physics should be pushed. Higher thinking skills are a must.

[sergiolandz]

good news ! Let the old garbage education system crash.

[Evan-dcmt]

who will teach underwater basket weaving

[FactsAbout]

International students are not interested in programs where there isn't jobs.Learn from colleges.Colleges are better than lot of universities.

[Leftbrained_]

when you study stuff like gender studies, when the university starts struggling with insolvency of course your program is heading out the window first lol 🤣

[KlausSchawbJr]

No Suprise Political Science was the first to cut.

[ukie]

Far too many basket weaving courses and fortunately only a few takers. Time to get real.

[danrayan]

80% of university students shouldn't be there .they should be in colleges learning skills where they can graduate and fill jobs needed instead of wasting time and money at universities getting useless degrees and end up working at fast food outlets and what left of starbuck

[rboddington]

What a laugh, Australia did the same thing....they sat back while Chinese students flooded into their universities and paid much higher tuition. When the Chinese students went away, so did the money. Oooops.

[rboddington]

These professors have the greatest sense of entitlement, I worked in the private sector for a long time, and was laid off three times. That's life. I have no idea why professors working at a "public university" think they should have guaranteed life time employment?

[alelectric]

I’ll chime in here and say it’s not all the universities or it’s students fault. You need to look at business, especially big corporate business. They want degrees for entry level jobs so people went out to get one. It didn’t really matter what degree you got as long as you had one. People who weren’t really meant to go college went for the low level degrees & colleges happily provided them, at a cost of course.
This seem to start happening in the late 90s. It’s also seemed businesses were in line with colleges at the time almost as if they were colluding with each other. That’s a bit of a conspiracy theory but looking back it seemed to come together all at once.
It’s become so bloated now and people are demanding that you shouldn’t need a college degree for an entry level job, business are starting to reverse that.

[TheHandOfGovernment]

We need to cut physics programs to allow for gender studies programs

[oldgregg]

Cutting programs is exactly what they need, I remember applying for university and was just confused by how many programs they had. They must have had over 150 undergrad programs (because they offer everything in English and French) for such a small university. Hope they get to keep running but they’ll definitely need to specialize a little more in the things they’re known for like geology and mining.

[trog.lodyte]

But how will students finish their lesbian dance degrees now?

[johntmathew]

Strong leadership matters - don't blame international students or the lethal virus. Afterall, education is much more than the bottom-line. Harvard President Larry Bacow cautions us:"‘Surround yourself with good people, and help them achieve’". There.

[johnnygalaxy]

Good! We do our best learning outside of school. Best to stay out of it and not even take on that ridiculous student debt!