“Our students pay more to be sitting next to a student in the exact same class who’s paying $90 less than them for that class,” said business faculty advisor Lindsay Eastman.
This past year enrolment at the Paul J. Hill School of Business was at a slight decrease. In spite of this decline, student populations in previous years have steadily risen.
“We’re not facing a more luxurious or extravagant budget than anywhere else in the university. It’s been tight, there are no extra funds to work with,” said Eastman. “We’ve had very strict budget cuts just like the rest of the university,” he explained.
"We are always trying to defend our position with the budget and why we shouldn’t have further decreases. The whole university is really feeling it, there’s a climate of fear with all of the administration adjustments” said Eastman.
“The most important thing is to hire an adequate number of faculty so we can do adequate class scheduling to ensure that there are enough seats for available students for the course progression,” said Eastman.
Professor Ernest Johnson’s third year management information system classes are at full capacity.
“For example I started teaching a classroom of 35 and now that same class is at 68. The fire marshall says we can only have 68 students per class but if 100 was permitable we would have gone for 100,” said Johnson.
“It has nothing to do with the external economy," added Bill Bonner."If we have more students and don’t get more resources, then how does that work when there are a limited number of staff teaching more and more students?”
“Our class sizes are huge and our resources are relatively limited and have been for some time and we’ve lived with that but there’s a point beyond which we just can’t function,” said the management information systems professor.
Fourth-year marketing student Sarah Novak is keen on the versatility of her business administration degree.
“I think it’s applicable to any area in the world. Any single organization or company can’t run without business people and I think it’s cool how business can apply to any area in life and you learn a lot about current events and stuff that’s going on around the world, too,” said Novak.
“I didn’t know why I wanted to go into business when I first came to school but once I came here I’m glad that I did because I feel like I could basically get a job in any company,” said Novak.
Business Administrator Devon Anderson says the university is dependent upon 70 per cent of its funding from government. This dictates what an institution can and can’t do.
“We’re supposed to be a booming province and yet we’ve had to look at where we could cut back, like where’s the money? Why don’t we have money?” said Anderson.
“We’ve had to cut back our sessional budget quite a bit,” said Anderson, even though business class sessions run from 8:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. year-round at maximum capacity.
The six area groups of specialization are: human resources/organizational behaviour, marketing, accounting, finance, entrepreneurship and international business.
“Our business school has always felt that the liberal arts side of it is a really important aspect for our students,” said Anderson. “We’re still committed to that liberal arts portion, we encourage our students to understand the importance of those other classes.”
“I can understand when faculties are facing cuts or feeling threatened, its just really human nature to sort of look around and get defensive but I think we are all in this together and we want what’s best for our university and for our students so let’s look at the university as a whole and why can’t we get adequate funding for all of our programs? They’re all important right?” said Anderson.
“We all try to work together and it is a really liberal university strongly influenced by social sciences and humanities,” said Eastman.
