Athabasca University reaches funding agreement with Alberta government

The Alberta government and Athabasca University have unanimously approved a funding agreement following months of negotiations over the province's local employment requirements for the school. 

The investment management agreement sets local employment level targets for the school's administrative and executive staff.

The agreement states the school needs to increase the number of local employees by 25 — from 252 to 277 — and have half of the university's executives live and work full-time in Athabasca within three years.

Advanced Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides said that it's up to the university to decide how to meet the targets, which the government suggested in a revised agreement sent to the board earlier this month. 

"We can't shift a mountain overnight," he said in an interview with CBC News Thursday. "It's going to take some time and I think things need to be done in a deliberate, cautious, gradual and incremental way. I think that's the right path."

Athabasca University is Canada's largest online university, with 1,200 employees serving more than 40,000 students.

The original proposed agreement, sent last summer, set a target of having 65 per cent of AU employees working full-time in Athabasca by 2025. The town of 2,800 people is 150 kilometres north of Edmonton.

But there was pushback from staff and faculty prompting the province to threaten to pull the institution's monthly operating grant of $3.4 million.

The target came after a 2017 report into the university's future recommended that it strengthen its physical presence in Athabasca.

However, many AU employees who work virtually outside the community raised concerns about the possibility they would be forced to move.

At the time, university president Peter Scott said it was unrealistic to relocate 500 people and their families within that time frame to a town of 3,000.

In a news release Thursday, Scott said he was pleased the new agreement "removes the threat of forced relocation of AU team members, creates financial stability, and gives us the ability to continue to work near-virtually, which will help AU compete for talent."

He said AU is looking forward to working with Nicolaides on establishing a new northern Alberta research hub at the university's Athabasca headquarters. 

Rhiannon Rutherford, president of the university's faculty association, told the CBC she worries about the precedent the agreement will set for other institutions.

"This is pretty unprecedented and it's concerning that a university can be subject to the ministry coming, requiring upheaval, and this level of overreach," Rutherford said.

Rutherford said she does not believe there will have to be relocations other than for a select few executive members, adding the 25 local positions will likely be new hires so as not to disrupt current positions and employees.

But Rutherford said she imagines other post-secondary institutions are concerned with the decision, and the long process to achieve the agreement.

"I can't imagine there are a lot of folks in the post-secondary sector in the province who are feeling like this sets a positive precedent."

In the release, the province said "it is collaborating with all post-secondary institutions to develop comprehensive investment management agreements for 2022-23 that will include a variety of goals tailored to each institution."