Technical University of British Columbia - Establishment

Establishment

The roots of TechBC were in demand from Fraser Valley residents for a full-service university in the region. In 1991, the Fraser Valley University Society was formed to organize public pressure towards this goal. (Ironically in light of later events, one of its first actions was to lobby SFU president William Saywell to open a satellite campus in the region.)

The policy of both Social Credit and New Democratic Party (NDP) governments of the day was to grant degree-granting status to the existing post-secondary institutions in the region, today's Kwantlen Polytechnic University and University of the Fraser Valley. By the mid-1990s, however, the ability of these institutions to keep up with rapid population growth was increasingly in question. Of greater concern was the Fraser Valley's abysmally low university participation rate -- a rate that contributed to BC's ninth-place standing among Canadian provinces on this factor.

Public opinion polling and the skills-development policies of the Mike Harcourt government led the province to announce, on 2 February 1995, the establishment of a free-standing technical university, to be located on a $100 million campus in Cloverdale. Legislation for the new institution, Technical University of British Columbia Act, was passed in July 1997. Controversially, the Technical University of British Columbia Act did not provide for an academic senate, a standard feature of faculty curriculum control in other universities. This, coupled with news that the new university would operate without tenure, led to a year-long boycott by the Canadian Association of University Teachers.