The president of Nipissing University Michael DeGagne, says a report leaked to the Globe and Mail is outdated and the major changes in an audit have already be made.
See previous story here: Auditor says Nipissing must cut more courses and faculty to survive
The report apparently wasn't made for public eyes.
"The report is an internal document and came out of a discussion between Nipissing University and the Ministry of Colleges and Universities," DeGagne told BayToday by phone Wednesday. "It's quite confidential to the university.
"We distributed copies to a few people internally and apparently someone has gone to the Globe and Mail with a copy."
Degage says the report is an examination of the university's practices, programs, finances so it would know how to balance its books in the future.
"It was decided early last year to have this report, and we worked on it for four months. The final copy came out in the summer and in October it was presented to the board of directors.
"Even by then, last year, most of the really significant decisions around funding cuts and financial sustainability had already been made."
The report talks about closing campuses in Bracebridge and Brantford and reducing administrative staff and finding economies within the budget, something administration worked on last year.
"We've already done that. A lot of this stuff is old news so I'm not quite sure what the purpose was of releasing it to the Globe and Mail but it does refer to a snapshot of Nipissing University from at least a year ago."
Another key part in the report spoke about selling assets, and referred to the Bracebridge properties.
"Unlike a lot of urban universities where they have hundreds of acres of land in urban centres or downtown Toronto, we don't have a lot of assets. We have shared assets with Canadore but other than that we don't have a lot of things we can sell. We had already made our decision to close our Bracebridge campus and so we're moving to sell that real estate."
One piece of property not on the block is the Monastery across from the university.
"The Monastery is a prime piece of property up on the escarpment and it's so close to our campus. Selling the Monastery is not in the cards."
