Province provides Athabasca University with $4.9M for planning, IT upgrades

Grant comes a year after NDP ordered report into viability of online institution

Athabasca University will receive a one-time $4.9-million grant from the province to help it execute its new strategic plan and upgrade lagging information technology infrastructure, the government said Friday.

The funding announcement comes almost one year after Ken Coat es released his government commissioned report into the future viability of Canada’s only public online post-secondary institution.

Ordered by the NDP government in January 2017, the Coates Report evaluated all facets of the university, including finances, courses, staffing and infrastructure in a time when the university was grappling with a deficit budget and increasing financial pressures.

One of the key recommendations when the report was released June 8, 2017, was that government give the university one year to complete a revised institutional plan for renewal.

“We have said all along that once the finances were in order and they had a solid direction to go, government would invest in Athabasca and we are making good on that,” Advanced Education Minister Marlin Schmidt said.

“We’ve been very pleased with how things have progressed.

“It was critical for us that Athabasca University get their house in order and have a solid plan in place.”

University president Neil Fassina said $1.5 million will be directed toward a five-year information technology strategy that will help shift from on-premises infrastructure to a cloud-based environment.

“We often talk about brick and mortar, but now we are talking about cloud and code,” he said.

The transition will help create “that truly digital-first and puredigital learning environment that’s based on a cloud and code campus,” he said.

The upgrades will also include improvements to security protocols and will help address longstanding criticism from the province’s auditor general, who scolded the university in 2016 for a failure to establish off-site disaster recovery facilities.

Fassina said he is confident of “making the auditor general very happy” with the progress the university has made.

A further $1.5 million will be used for planning and development of a student delivery framework and another $1.5 million will be spent on implementing the new strategic plan.

The final $400,000 is earmarked for a long-range development plan that will include a renewal of the teaching and learning framework, he said.

The university will spend up to $150,000 for a consultant to develop a plan to address its physical space needs, including the consolidation of its Edmonton operations into one location. Leases at both its Edmonton spaces are set to expire on March 31, 2020.

The university currently owns 620 acres of land in the Athabasca area, including 600 acres adjacent to the existing university campus.

In Edmonton, the university leases 45,045 square feet of office, meeting room and classroom spaces at Peace Hills Trust Tower and at the faculty of business location on the St. Albert Trail.

Schmidt said it was critical “that Athabasca University get their house in order and have a solid plan in place” and he is confident that is now the case.

“Our overall goal has been to increase access to university education in Alberta and Athabasca fills that critical role,” he said.

It was critical for us that Athabasca University get their house in order and have a solid plan in place.