Sask. Polytechnic navigating enrollment decline, need for trained workers

While navigating drops in enrollment and recent layoffs, there is still an abundant need for well-trained post-secondary students in Saskatchewan.

On Tuesday, Saskatchewan Polytechnic president and CEO, Dr. Larry Rosia, joined The Evan Bray Show to discuss some of the latest developments for the post-secondary institutions, from layoffs and the impact of fewer international students to new developments and fundraising campaigns.

Read more:

• Sask. Polytechnic students in ‘complete shock’ over program relocation
• Strathcona Resources donates $1 million to Sask. Polytechnic
• New flight simulator at Sask. Polytech elevates commercial pilot program

Listen to the full interview, or read the transcript below:

The following questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.

EVAN BRAY: I think there’s lots of exciting things (happening), but let’s get some of the challenges out of the way, because I know in talking with the leaders of both the (University of Regina) and (University of Saskatchewan), this international student thing is having an impact on organizations like yours. Can you give us the lowdown of the impact it’s having?

DR. LARRY ROSIA: It absolutely is, Evan and (it’s affecting) our whole sector across Canada. Just to give you some perspective – before we zero in on Saskatchewan or Saskatchewan Polytechnic, and it’s something that a lot of people don’t realize – but the Canadian post-secondary sector as undergone some challenges. Of course, international enrollment has been affected by several factors. It’s complicated but the main factor is the changes to the federal immigration policies. As a result, we’ve seen and Canada has seen a notable decline in international student applications, (education consultant) Ken Steele has been keeping a ticker, and every Friday he puts out a running total of the impact it’s having on this sector. As of last Friday, $6.4 billion of lost revenue, 20,140 jobs have been lost, a little more than 1200 programs have been suspended, and there’s been 90 site closures across the sector. If that was any other sector – the steel industry, the auto industry – we’d hear about it on the news every day. But this is kind of what’s silently happening across across Canada to the higher education sector, and as you pointed out, at a time when it’s critical, and the skills that we produce are going to be needed. We’re not immune from that, of course, and our international student enrollment is down approximately 40 per cent and that has created a substantial revenue shortfall for the organization.

You’ve had to reduce the number of staff, both full time and part time, and predominantly in areas where maybe enrollment was low. Is that where you focused your work?

DR. ROSIA: Absolutely. Student success is always our top priority and we’ve had to make some very difficult decisions, horrible decisions around staff and programs. Once this happened, we had to take action quickly. The result of the changing landscape, we’ve had to make some, as I said, very difficult decisions to issue layoff notices to more than 124 full-time and part-time employees this academic year and that’s really hard, because these are great employees. It’s all based on a thorough review our enrollment trends, the financial data and the government announcements that were coming out of the federal government. They kept announcing new cuts and changes to their policy, and we had to kind of monitor that and make adjustments accordingly. As I said, we were down 40 per cent substantial revenue shortfall and we’re not anticipating a quick rebound in international enrollments in the next year, as well.

I want to focus on some good news. That stuff is tough. You have got some great stuff going as a leader of Saskatchewan Polytechnic, you must be proud of some of the innovative things. Let’s talk about this Business, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Centre. What it’s trying to accomplish?

DR. ROSIA: That’s the bad news, but there are a lot of good thing is going on at Saskatchewan Polytechnic on a daily basis, sometimes hard for me to keep up. The latest one last week, we did have an announcement (about) our Business and Innovation Entrepreneurship Centre at our Moose Jaw campus, designed to spark bold ideas and strengthen business growth across the province. The centre is going to provide practical support for students, entrepreneurs, community members to explore early stage ventures. It’ll provide workshops on market testing, pricing, sales, operations, as well as providing a structured mentorship for for students, entrepreneurs and community members that are are are wanting to get that structured mentorship and help them through some of their project work. We’re also offering short, flexible cohorts that are designed around real schedules. A lot of these people are very busy. Some of them are working and doing this on the side. So they’re designed around their schedules. We launched January of 2026, the Sask. Polytech Startup Challenge. It’s a 10-week mentorship and pitch competition for early stage entrepreneurs. And we have some students, as well. The final showcase for that Startup Challenge will be April 16 at the Moose Jaw Town and Country Home.

I love that you’re providing a space where mentors can come in, because this province is rich with entrepreneurs, business leaders who have been there, grinding it out in the trenches, and they’ve got some lessons learned. Bringing them together with some of your students. Dr. Rosia, I think it’s brilliant.

DR. ROSIA: The camaraderie of that group is amazing, as well. We have a number of them stepping up and saying, ‘I want to give back. I want to help. My journey was so difficult. If I can help someone someone else, I’m happy to do that.’ So, we are getting a lot of entrepreneurs wanting to help in that area. Which leads to another area that we’ve been having a lot of a lot of excitement around, is our whole applied research area. It’s almost technology transfer, and to put it at very basic terms, universities discover, invent and create things. We help industry and entrepreneurs take those discoveries and inventions and apply them to their problems. Industry entrepreneurs, startups, come to us with an idea, a concept. We bring them into our institution. We team them up with a multidisciplinary team of students and and faculty. We have thousands of square feet of maker space, high tech equipment that they may not have otherwise access to, and our students solve their problems for them. It’s been really positive. We’ve got a lineup of industry wanting that sort of help from our applied research area. In fact, there’s a Canadian ranking that takes place, and just this last year, we have ranked number one in Canada for the number of applied research partnerships. We’re number one in Canada for completed applied research projects and we are number four in applied AI research projects. We ranked in seven categories in the top 10 across Canada.

Both of these programs are filling a gap that I think needs to be filled in our province. Can we talk about the meat and potatoes of what you do at Sask. Polytech? I feel like every week on this show, we’ll talk to someone in a profession or a discipline that is desperately needing new leaders and new workers. There’s a need for more vets, there’s a need for more skilled labor and welding and all the rest of it. Are we able to fill the seats that basically sustain the need in the province? Or do we do we still have a ways to go there?

DR. ROSIA: We have a ways to go, I would say. It is basically the environment we’re in. I believe it’s a polytechnic moment in Saskatchewan, across Canada and globally. And I say that because we see a lot of countries that are are creating polytechnic institutions, but our students are in high demand. Our sole purpose is to power a better Saskatchewan and we do that by providing industry with the skilled talent that it needs to be successful. We base our programs on industry demand. We have more than 700 industry experts that advise us on labor market trends as well as technology trends, so that our programs are always current and relevant. And in every sector, we have industry saying they need people, they need talent, they need our graduates.It’s one of the reasons our employment rate is, over the years, anywhere from 94 to 97 per cent employment rate upon graduation. They’re stepping out of the classroom into a job and contributing (from) day one, in all sectors, and I don’t see that slowing down at all. When you you hear the finance minister during budget day talk about $60 billion worth of projects in this province, all of those projects are going to require the skills that we train for and that we provide our graduates to go into those jobs. We have an aging population, we have a growing population. The need for healthcare isn’t ever going to decrease; the need for healthcare workers is insatiable. Our applications are up, demand for our programs are up. During Budget Day, they announced an additional 300 apprenticeship seats. We provide 95 per cent of the province’s apprenticeship training, so we’ll probably see 280 of those additional seats. Programs have wait lists, but we have only so many operating dollars and that’s what limits the number of students that we can take into each class. I heard the other day, I was talking to one of the program heads at our Regina campus power engineering, we have 100 students on a wait list to get in that program.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring up the Time to Rise campaign, a big fundraiser that you’re doing. I know you’ve got a website, timetorise.ca. What is this hoping to accomplish?

DR. ROSIA: We’re really excited about that and really humbled by the generosity of industry and individuals who have contributed to our Time to Rise campaign. This is a campaign for our new Saskatoon campus, where we will build a new campus, take the 11 locations we have in Saskatoon and bring them to one site at the University of Saskatchewan, create something unique to Canada and, to my knowledge, nowhere in North America will you find a U15 research intensive university research park with about 150 tech companies, entrepreneurs and startups and a polytechnic institution all co-located to create an innovation corridor in Saskatoon for Saskatchewan. We have launched our first capital campaign ever, our $100 million capital campaign. As of right now, we’re 70 per cent complete towards that campaign. And just to keep everyone’s interest piqued, there will be another exciting announcement this week on Thursday, so stay tuned!