Red Deer post-secondary students press to be able to earn degrees without leaving town

CBC Edmonton and CBC Calgary have teamed up to launch a pop-up Red Deer bureau to help us tell your stories from central Alberta. For the next month, reporter Heather Marcoux will bring you the news from Red Deer and the surrounding area. Story ideas and tips can be sent to heather.marcoux@cbc.ca.

Post-secondary students in Red Deer., Alta., are continuing to press for degrees in the wake of an Alberta government decision to transition the city's college into a polytechnic institution and not, as previously planned, a university.

"We have been fighting for degrees for a very, very long time and then we were told we were going to get university status and we were hoping we would get degrees with that," said Savannah Snow, a third-year business student at Red Deer College (RDC) and students' association president. 

In March, Snow joined a student protest asking the Alberta  government to approve the five degrees — biological science, business administration, education and two separate psychology degrees — which had been submitted by the institution for approval. 

At that point, the province had already hinted the planned transition into a university might not be in the cards. This week, it was confirmed that RDC would become a polytechnic institution offering apprenticeship education as well as degree, diploma and certificate programs.

The polytechnic status is a good fit for RDC, Snow said, but it doesn't change the need to get the new degrees approved. That would mean students could finish their education without having to leave the central Alberta city.

She considers herself lucky. Her program is a collaborative degree done in conjunction with Calgary's Mount Royal University, which is where she will apply to graduate when her four years at RDC are complete. 

Under review

The biological sciences degree was approved in March, but the other four proposals are being reviewed "to ensure that they meet or exceed Alberta's high-quality standards," said a spokesperson for Demetrios Nicolaides, minister of advanced education.

There is no timeline for the independent review but Snow hopes it will be swift.

"We're all wondering what's going to happen with our degrees, what's going to happen with any collaborative programs that were enrolled in now, and what's going to happen to us moving forward," she said. 

Keeping students in central Alberta for undergraduate study has been a community goal for years, said Morris Flewwelling, the former chair of the Red Deer College board of governors and a former city mayor. 

"That has been the driving impetus in the last go-round of asking for university status," he said.

Education opportunities 

He said the polytechnic model is a good fit for the school, reflecting its deep investment in trades education. The school did not intend to pursue research or post-graduate programs. 

"It may look like there's been some demotion or dilution of the university idea. And I don't think that's the case at all," he said. 

"It's headed in the same direction that we thought. It's going to become known by a slightly different name, but that's about the only change." 

Flewwelling urged students to be patient as the process unfolds to decide on the degrees. 

The good news, he added, is that the institution is far along in the rigorous and complicated process. It received approval to grant degrees in 2018. 

"We've got some programs which are virtually ready to go," he said. "They've been submitted and they're in the pipeline and they'll come along just as quickly as possible."