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By Ashley Lavallee-Koenig

LAYOFFS AND PROGRAM REVIEWS

Red Deer Polytechnic predicts $10 million deficit for 2025-26 budget

Feb 5, 2025 | 6:30 PM

Red Deer Polytechnic (RDP) is in the midst of planning its 2025-26 school year budget (July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2026), and as of Feb. 5, predicts an estimated deficit of $10 million.

Stuart Cullum, RDP president, said the institution always strives for a balanced budget, but factors like inflation, plateaued funding and federal changes to international student policies have created challenges.

“We feel pretty confident that, while a deficit isn’t a great thing to have to deal with, we’re not really struggling as an institution. We just need to get through to the other side of that to keep our institution on a really solid path,” said Cullum.

RDP will be sharing more information about how it will address the deficit in the coming weeks and months, which Cullum expects to include program suspensions and staff reductions.

A program review is currently underway, the results of which he expects by the end of next week. Students currently enrolled in programs that get marked for suspension will have the opportunity to finish before they are fully phased out.

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“No students are going to be left behind,” said Cullum. “We teach out our programs. That’s something to be really clear about, is the programs that are suspended, the existing students who have enrolled in the program will be able to complete their program at Red Deer Polytechnic.”

He added that the student experience is a core priority for RDP’s budgeting, which will be maintained despite the deficit.

“We will continue to focus on that, and I don’t expect that students will see anything different walking in our doors in the fall of 2025 as what they would have seen walking in in the fall of 2024,” he said.

This includes tuition increases, which are capped by the provincial government and not likely to deviate from RDP’s previous trends, Cullum said.

In terms of staff reductions, at the moment, Cullum anticipates making 35-40 permanent layoffs.

The institution’s situation could still change as the province has yet to release its 2025 budget. It is currently scheduled to be released on Feb. 27 but until then, there’s no way for RDP to know what the state of its base grant funding is for the next year.

Cullum explained, “We predicated conservatively based on the fact that we’ve been working with seven years of either reductions or zeros on our base grant, so we predicated our budget based on that historical approach that the government has taken.”

In the meantime, and in preparation for this kind of challenge, RDP has been working to build partnerships and find alternative sources of revenue, something it will continue to do moving forward.

With a plan in mind and action underway, Cullum remained optimistic about the polytechnic’s ability to continue supporting its community partners and get through this challenge.

“I don’t think that our community and our industry partners can expect a lot different from us,” he said. “I still think we’re very well positioned to meet and achieve our strategic plan and our mandate of supporting Alberta’s critical industries.”

At the moment, Cullum plans to run the deficit over the next three years. Otherwise, Red Deer Polytechnic will continue working toward achieving its 2030 Strategic Plan: Productivity and Social Impact.

More information is expected in the coming weeks.

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