Posts with the Craig Stephenson tag

Barris Beat

Cut college funding at your peril!

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
Ontario Legislature shut down by winter election, in 2025

Like most, I received my “convincer cheque” from the provincial government a few days ago. It says it’s from the Ministry of Finance. But it couldn’t be plainer that its point of origin is Conservative Party HQ. It’s dated Jan. 29, 2025, exactly 24 hours after the premier visited Lt. Gov. Edith Dumont to dissolve Ontario’s 43rd Parliament for a general election Feb. 27, even though the premier doesn’t need to call an election until June 2026.

“Ontario Taxpayer Rebate,” the cheque is called.

Of greater importance to me that same week, however, I learned that Centennial College, where I instructed for 18 years, had permanently cancelled 49 programs, including 16 programs in its business school, seven at its engineering school and 14 communications courses at the Story Arts campus in East York. (more…)

Barris Beat

The crisis is real on campus

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
Dr. Craig Stephenson, president of Centennial College since August 2019.

The president contacted me this week. No, not that president. He’s an administrator of a large Toronto-area college. He addressed me by my first name, which caught my attention. Then, he offered some reflections on the pandemic, its impact on teaching, on learning and most assuredly on budgets. I sensed it was a pitch letter. But he wasn’t pitching me about hisbudget. He spoke about students’ budgets, or lack of them.

“It’s the beginning of a new order,” Craig Stephenson, president of Centennial College, said in a note, “full of uncertainty for our students…” (more…)