Establishment of universities in Alberta (1908-1950s)
In 1905, the province of Alberta was created out of the North West Territories and the following year, the Alberta legislature passed an act to establish a provincial university. Founded in 1908, the University of Alberta became the first degree granting institution in the province. The university followed the model of the land-grant state colleges in the Midwest of the United States and is a non-denominational, publicly supported institution that provides programs accessible to the provincial population.
A number of Calgary business owners and the municipal government attempted to establish the private "University of Calgary" in Calgary and by October 1912, began classes. In 1911, 1913 and 1915 it applied for degree-granting powers, but was turned down. It was renamed Calgary College, and closed in 1915 due to low enrollment, lack of financial support, continuing squabbles with the province and the beginning of the World War I.
In 1916 The Provincial Institute of Technology and Art (PITA) is established in Calgary to train returning veterans of World War I.
Mount Royal College in Calgary becomes a junior college affiliated with the University of Alberta in 1931 and begins offering one-year university transfer programs. But the affiliation entailed a certain degree of control over college affairs by the University of Alberta.
In 1933, the Banff School of Fine Arts was established with the aid of a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
After the World War II, higher education in Alberta expanded resulting from the province's fast transformation into an urban industrial society and increased demand for skilled manpower. In response to the growing demand for university education, the provincial government allowed the university of Alberta to establish a branch of its Faculty of Education in Calgary in 1945. In 1957, Lethbridge Junior College was established.
Post-secondary expansion (1960s)
The 1960s was also a period of important institutional development for the post-secondary sector, as various legislations were enacted in order to consolidate and solidify new institutions. Several institutions were created in smaller urban centres, establishing a network of colleges and technical institutes. Some of these were Red Deer College in 1964, Medicine Hat College in 1966, Grande Prairie Junior College in 1966, and Mount Royal College in 1966. The University of Calgary and the University of Lethbridge, which had been branch campuses of the University of Alberta, were developed into autonomous institutions in 1966 and 1967 respectively.
Federal government support for technical education continued after World War II via the Technical and Vocational Training Assistance Act (TVTAA) of 1960, which was designed to help construct new vocational high schools, institutes of technology and adult-training centres. The province began expanding the capacity for apprenticeship and vocational training that, until then, had been handled solely by the Provincial Institute of Technology and Arts (PITA) in Calgary. The Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) was created in Edmonton, and PITA was transformed into the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, both in 1962.
New agencies were also formed such as the Board of Post-Secondary Education and the Alberta Department of Advanced Education in 1967, which were to oversee post-secondary institutions other than universities. Another milestone occurred in 1966, when the Province of Alberta began systematically providing operating grants to post-secondary institutions. In 1969, the Colleges Act was passed, making colleges partners in higher education in the province. The act aims at solidifying the newly created colleges of the province.
In 1969, the Minister of Education, Robert Curtis Clark, established a Commission on Educational Planning headed by Dr. Walter Worth. The Worth Report (1972) set the course for PSE in the province to this day. Among the recommendations made in the Worth Report, one major theme is that the provincial government should change structures in such a manner as to have more direct influence on the post-secondary system.
Distance education in Alberta (1970s)
The 1970s witnessed new institutional developments, the most important being the creation of the fourth Alberta university, Athabasca University, in 1970 by an order in council of the Government of Alberta. It was to be a campus-based university, but given decreasing enrollments in university campuses afterwards, the institution followed the model of the British open university specializing in the delivery of distance education courses and programs. In 1970, the Alberta government also established the Banff Centre for Continuing Education under the trustee of the University of Calgary.
The Ministry of Advanced Education was established in 1972. The Alberta Council on Admissions and Transfer (ACAT) was established in 1974 to guide the transfer of academic credit among provincial post-secondary institutions. In 1975, the Conservative government acknowledged the linkage between education and employment by transferring the Manpower Division from Manpower and Labour to the Department of Advanced Education and Manpower. This arrangement existed until 1983, when the manpower portfolio was again separated from Advanced Education.
A series of new funding policies were introduced in 1973 and 1976. These new funding mechanisms took into account factors such as the projection of operational costs over a three-year period and the rate of inflation to determine the allocation of resources for a growing number of institutions.
Increasing institutional competition and financial restructuring (1980s - 1990s)
In the 1980s, community colleges began to receive funds in order to establish their own apprenticeship training programs. Prior to this, these programs were centralized in technical institutes. As technical institutes lost their exclusive control over apprenticeship programs, they gained increased autonomy when Bill 98, the Technical Institutes Act, was approved in 1982, transferring their governance from the provincial government to their own board of governors. In the financial front, the 1980s are marked by the introduction of a Supplementary Enrollment Fund for Post-Secondary funding in 1982, which factored in enrollment increases to allocate provincial financial resources.
The 1990s saw Alberta's post-secondary system change in terms of significant financial restructuring imposed by the provincial government, and the introduction of a new and targeted funding model that emphasizes accountability and demonstration of results. These developments were part of the province's deficit reduction strategy in the Alberta government's 1993 announcement to eliminate its provincial debt within four years. The 1990s were characterized by the introduction of funding caps and reduction in overall support for post-secondary programs.
One such program was a tuition fee policy introduced by the provincial government in 1990-91, which limited the amount of revenue that public post-secondary institutions could generate from fees to 30% of net operating expenditures by the year 2000. As a result, Alberta went from being the province with the highest per-capita funding for post-secondary education in 1984 to being the ninth, or second to last in 2000.
Second post-secondary expansion and government restructuring (2000s - present)
In 2000, the provincial government created a K-16 model by combining K-12 and higher education into one department named Alberta Learning.
On March 17, 2004, the Post-Secondary Learning Act was proclaimed, amalgamating the former Universities Act, Colleges Act, Banff Centre Act and Technical Institutes Act into a single piece of legislation.
The booming Alberta economy led to significant investments in post-secondary institutions and policies. A series of new scholarships were introduced for all newborns in the province, and the existing Rutherford scholarships were expended. There were also heavy capital investments, with almost all the main campuses receiving funds for expansions, renovations, and upgrades. A new interest in P3 funding also fuelled this expansion. Many of the new facilities and faculty have made the University of Alberta one of the world's top research institutions, and boast the second-largest student body in Canada as of September, 2009.
In September, 2009, Calgary's Mount Royal University and Edmonton's Grant MacEwan University became the province's fifth and sixth public universities, respectively. Formerly considered colleges, both institutions offer many of the degrees and facilities previously only available at the two larger universities.
Despite recent high provincial spending, tuition costs remain a concern for many Alberta students. Many promised cuts have yet to be realized, and costs are expected to rise again in the 2010s. The recent worldwide economic downturn has also brought a huge number of unemployed people back to school, putting further pressures on the institutions.