McGill University set to slash its budget, cut jobs

McGill University is cutting its budget this year by $45 million and implementing measures to eliminate its projected operating deficits over the next three fiscal years with the goal of protecting its long-term sustainability.

The next two consecutive fiscal budgets will also reportedly be slashed by $16 million and $14 million.

The measures announced by the university include new initiatives to increase revenues, carefully planned cuts, and the suspension or downsizing of some activities, as well as the reduction of faculty and staff complement through attrition and likely layoffs.

The Montreal Gazette is reporting the university is set to cut between 250 and 500 jobs.

The university is also announcing it’s launching a new initiative, Horizon McGill, which it says “will streamline their processes and improve administrative efficiencies, and benchmark them against similar research-intensive universities.” The initiative will also explore new ways of optimizing academic program delivery.

Various contributing factors

In a statement, McGill says “economic, demographic, and political trends have all come together to reduce investment in higher education, but McGill bears partial responsibility for this situation – our operating expenses are tracking to grow faster than our revenues.”

The university, however, also points a finger at successive government decisions that “in just over a year, have clawed back enrolment revenues, reduced our capacity to recruit students from outside of Quebec, and decreased operating grants.

“It has taken more than two centuries to build this world-renowned university,” says the university in its statement, “but just over a year for these decisions to harm it deeply.”

Despite the cutbacks, McGill’s statement ends on a positive note, reiterating university president Deep Saini’s words that “unconventional solutions will be explored,” and that while this period may be difficult McGill will emerge “stronger, leaner, more competitive, and better configured to not only protect its academic mission, but help it flourish – here at home in Quebec, and around the world.”