This article was last updated on April 16, 2022
Canada: 
Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…
USA: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…UPEI’s 9 million budget shortfall is not an accident – the University of PEI has been ignoring progress for decades
Spring time at UPEI
The University of Prince Edward Island is facing a $9 million budget crisis.
It cannot run an annual deficit so deep cuts are imminent. Heads will roll in all departments.
The seeds of this problem go back to the 1980s when a moribund general arts college ignored the information technology revolution and kept pumping out Arts degrees that had little value in a changing world.
It’s not unusual for moribund universities to miss the boat on change.
Recent human rights abuses and fraud scandals have tarnished the university’s public relations image. The Province of PEI has no political sympathy for UPEI and are leaving the university to swing in the wind. The Province is struggling to save itself financially and could not help UPEI if it had the political will to do so.
In effect, UPEI is in the untenable position where the consensus on UPEI is let them solve their own problems.
Even the prized veterinary college faces a demographic perfect storm of baby boomer retirements that will sharply reduce the need for veterinarians over the next two decades and over-priced services in a shrinking market.
Demand for pet veterinarians is not going up. The technology revolution has replaced expensive radiologists. Your family pet vet is next. It is not a growth industry. If past history repeats itself, UPEI they will discover it after the horse has left the barn.
During the 1980s and 1990s, UPEI opportunities to set up a computer science department that would train young people for IT jobs. Instead the faculty and management argued unsuccessfully for another Arts chair. That was a nail in the coffin of education subsidies.
UPEI missed the IT boom, the biggest economic engine of the last 50 years. From mini-computers, microcomputers, client server and the internet, the university missed the train.
Today IT growth is in mobile and cloud technology. Does UPEI have a department dedicated to emerging technologies that can incubate start up companies in the region and provide career opportunities for graduates?
The answer is no. UPEI graduates nurses for jobs outside the region, teachers for closing schools and general arts degrees that qualify the young people to work in low paying service jobs.
It’s no accident that the $50 million education boom on PEI was at Holland College which UPEI snubs as a glorified vocational school. Holland College is pumping out students, however, who can get a job.
UPEI has tried to make up shortfalls by enticing foreign students. This market has its limits. Foreign students are learning that a UPEI degree has no cache. The lack of masters and post graduate schools means the school is a dead end.
Corruption at UPEI
Hubris is in healthy supply at UPEI. A fraud scandal cast a shadow over the School of Business for several years. The Dean of Business, her husband and the PEI Department of Tourism were embroiled in a fraudulent financial threesome. In a story worthy of tabloid television, a former protégé of a business professor moved to the PEI Department of Tourism. Suddenly the professor was able to get paid twice for work that belonged to a University organization.
When the facts come into the open, UPEI and its Board of Governors buried their heads in the sand and hoped it would blow over. No disciplinary action was taken against the alleged fraudsters, except the Dean resigned in disgrace and the federal government charged the professor with income tax evasion.
Fraud charges don’t appear to be in the offing but the case comes up in the media with regularity reminding us that things are not as they should be. The government shuffled the protégé off to another department. Nothing happens on PEI, nothing ever does.
Human Rights Abuse
UPEI has been involved in multiple human rights cases and losing badly. They lost a million dollar complaint of age discrimination by professors pushed into retirement. Instead of dealing with the issue pragmatically, former UPEI President Wade MacLauchlan tried to bully his way out, losing badly in the court and in public esteem.
Apparently that was only the tip of the iceberg on human rights. There have been at least two complaints of sexual abuse at UPEI. One was settled in mediation through more bully boy tactics but will not go away. The complainant or someone in the know fills the on-line comments section of the local rag with details at every opportunity. The other one is ongoing.
I have had my own human rights battle with UPEI under MacLauchlan. Disabled parking was a luxury best moved to the perimeter of the campus decreed MacLauchlan, despite legal requirements. For my advocacy efforts, I was subject to a mobbing by former president MacLauchlan who proved he is no respecter of human rights. This was a minor quibble. Who gives a flying fig about the disabled trying to get an education.
The only short term solution for UPEI is to right-size. Whether or not they understand their systemic problem of irrelevancy in the new economy is hard to say.
MacLauchlan was quite the bully, and openly stated his disrespect for human rights laws. He was disrespectful to those with less power and when he could not bully, he would gather his ‘clan’ to mob. Even after he left, I know of someone who is feeling the pains of MacLauchlan’s plan to violate a female rights, at the mob he set up to get her after he left. He was sick.. His lawyer is the type that gives lawyers a very very bad name. I saw him in action, it was a disgraceful verbal attack , in a human rights mediation, of all places, where in this mediation it was a horrendous display of constant violations on a female victim, who UPEI needed silenced unfairly, who told the human rights mediation group,, where she had been bullied, harassed, verbally abused by those in attendence, that she was going to report the unethical behavior and all the breaches in the mediated human rights contract. Murphy started yelling at her, burst into anger, stating she deserved what she got, ‘you will get nothing for me’ you deserve nothing’ you deserved all the harassment and losses you got (the female had been assaulted as well and still traumatized by it. I saw the most cold and inhuman beast; he learned so much, not good qualities, from the former old prescomment_IDent, and with time, hopefully he will be just a bad memory. I am familiar with a horrific sexual harassment, assault and harassment of several faculty where the victim was brought into (tricked) into a human rights mediation with out a legal mediator and brutally tortured. It would make anyone sick. Murphy had a hcomment_IDden client, that is why they needed to silence her and when she signed the mediation settlement, Murphy refused to follow one of the contract memorandums-not one- then held her to hers including the silencing gag clauses. This female was further abused, defamed, falsely accused, Murphy would not allow her on campus, and when she tried to defend herself he would send her lawyer threats that he would expel her, vocomment_ID the contract etc. They needed her silent so Murphy’s silence client could be kept in the dark regarding lies they told her.. UPEI was afracomment_ID that the victim might say something or spill the beans. The female has gone back to HRC (brave female)- UPEI is bad, it will take a strong leader and ethical one in order to stop years of abuse, harassment, disrespect for others’ rights.