Thompson Rivers University’s Vice President of Finance says a lot has changed over the past six weeks, but the one thing that hasn’t is the uncertainty of where it may end up in the fall.

Speaking on The Jeff Andreas Show, Matt Milovick says in terms of budget, fall numbers are better than expected, but it’s no indication of where things will eventually be in September. He says it has been in discussions with groups that represent TRU employees.

“Just to be up front, we’ve had discussions about the possibility of furloughs and layoffs. We’re working through that. We’ve done various scenario planning exercises. So, we’re in discussions with our employee groups. We want to be in a position in the fall where we can pivot either to perhaps reducing staff if we have to, or not if our numbers come in better than expected.”

Milovick calls it a tenuous time and it is very concerned with employee welfare.

Milovick says the $252 million budget as presented in March was provisional and suggested it freeze all hiring, reduce travel and minimize discretionary spending.

“And I think we’ve seen some impacts of those measures just in the late winter and early spring and we plan to present some of those results to the board. So from that perspective every dollar that we save now helps us to weather the storm in the fall. So right now the budget is a moving target. The key is that we’re spending less.”

TRU has a fairly large international enrollment and there’s a lot of uncertainty around students willingness and ability to travel. “Our international students, their applications are higher than they’ve ever been, but a lot of them started coming in prior to the COVID crises. And domestic is about where we expected it. It’s about flat in terms of the applications, just the conversions that we’re worried about. How many of them are actually going to come.”