The College of the Rockies won't be getting university-college status anytime soon as a correspondence from the provincial government pointed out to council Monday.
Mayor and council were able to meet with Amrik Virk, Minister of Advanced Education, to enquire about the possibility of converting the college into a university college in the future.
Mayor Wayne Stetski explained the concept a bit during Monday's council meeting.
"The concept is that university-colleges certainly keep their college aspect – that's very important," Stetski said. "Certainly the interest here is that College of the Rockies is a very strong technical college. A university-college just generally allows the institution the opportunity do more degree granting."
Coun. Sharon Cross thought that making the college a university college was a bit of a stretch.
"I think it should be understood that College of the Rockies' current status is that it provides more skills and trades training than university transfers."
Currently College of the Rockies offers one university degree – in Sustainable Business Management.
"We're going to keep working away, even if we don't get university status in the name. The college is going to continue to work on trying to get more university degree granting abilities," Stetski said.
At the meeting, Minister Virk told Stetski that the province looks at the designations as a staircase the educational institutions want to keep ascending.
"The way the minister actually said it in the meeting – you give somebody the university college designation, within a couple years they want university designation, within a few more years after that they want a research university designation," Stetski said. "Every one of them costs the government more money."