ITK ‘working through’ submissions to host university main campus
Applications to host Inuit Nunangat University closed in April; ITK to present applications to board this fall
Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami president Natan Obed says the national Inuit organization is looking for a community to host the main campus of the Inuit Nunangat University, which will serve as an “important centre of activity for the institution.” Obed is shown speaking at a December 2023 news conference in Iqaluit. (File photo)
Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami will announce later this year which communities are in the running to host the main campus of the planned Inuit Nunangat University, which is expected to open in 2030.
The national Inuit organization launched a call for applications earlier this year to communities across the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, Nunavut, Nunavik and Nunatsiavut.
Interested communities were asked to complete a survey outlining their land availability, infrastructure, transportation access and community services, and also to secure support from local municipal councils.
An April 7 submission deadline was set, then extended to April 17.
The organization is “working through” the applications, said Patricia D’Souza, ITK’s communications director, May 1 in an email.
More information will be released in the fall after ITK’s board of directors reviews the submissions. From those submissions, four to six communities will be selected to submit full proposals, according to the ITK website.
D’Souza declined to say which communities have applied.
The proposed facility would house 100 students and include 80 staff, with a 26,900-square-foot main building and 21,500 square feet of living accommodations.
In a November interview, ITK president Natan Obed said Inuit Nunangat University will help reduce barriers to post-secondary education for Inuit by being closer to students’ home communities and centred on an Inuit world view.
“We are hoping that we can create a university that is an extension of Inuit society and that will be inclusive of Inuit from all regions or whoever else would like to attend the university,” Obed said.
The university will be supported by regional knowledge centres, or satellite campuses, across Inuit Nunangat. They’ll provide localized programming in areas such as marine studies, midwifery and Inuktut language immersion.
The institution is planning to launch with seven faculties including governance, Inuktut, social work and education, according to a draft overview. The first students are scheduled to arrive in 2030.
ITK has not confirmed a specific date for when the board of directors will select a site to host the main campus.
“We will certainly provide more details when they become available,” D’Souza said in an email.
Should consider how EDUCATION are administered today after the appointment of Deputy Minister with the Dept. of Education. The hiring of Teachers without any qualifications nor experience in Teaching. The students taught today are 95% leisure time absolutely doing nothing is classes to NO Textbooks Educations that is related to; How to read & write English Grammar, Mathematics, Social Studies, Science, and Physic’s (Fitness) etc. This include Tutor students that are behind with their EDUCATION!
This raises issues and concern how this Education system in Nunavut is very flawed based on Teachers hired without any Academic qualifications nor Certifications. The system is monopolized with this current Department of Education under the Regional Offices across the Territory. If you consider University in the North should take a peek how students are taught in classes today under the Regional Offices administration to Flawed hiring process of Teachers without NO QUALIFICATION’s! Notice this drama!?!
Lets be real, its not teachers that are holding back education for the most part. Look at attendance, its abysmal. Sub 50%, sub 25% once you get to the senior years. Yes there are examples of poor teachers, but nearly every community is pushing poor attendance rates, I would be willing to be the rate of poor parenting far exceeds the poor teaching, and that has a far, far larger impact on learning.
Walk through the school and kids are just sitting anywhere but in class and what can teachers do? Kids throw huge fits to the point of physical violence on a daily basis, they distract any kid who actually wants to learn. Any given time of day there’s packs of school age kids roaming streets, not in school.
This is not the teachers fault. You can’t facilitate classes for kids that refuse to be there and clearly parents could care less or do such a poor job parenting that their child has no respect for them anyways and just refuses to do what they say.
I wouldn’t even go as far to classify most high schools as day-care’s, they are honestly closer to zoos. There’s little to nothing teachers can honestly do except try to provide some safe space away from home to try to keep kids there.
Good teachers don’t want to teach to kids who show up once or twice a week.
“four to six communities will be selected to submit full proposals”. Should’ve just asked for full proposals from:
Iqaluit
Rankin
Baker
Kuujjuaq
Puvirnituq
Inuvik
So that you could throw 5 in the garbage and award the main campus to Iqaluit, which we all know will happen.
Not this again. Seems like an unbelievable waste of money that has been spent on study after study. Even Yellowknife doesn’t have a University and the Yukon just got one.
Let’s start by having an elementary school curriculum based on actual learning instead of moving students up a grade when they’re clearly not ready to do so. Let’s start by getting high school graduation rates up to the national average. Let’s start by getting Arctic College enrolment and graduation levels up to the national average.
Once these steps are achieved, there may be enough education Inuit to run a University, so it isn’t just a bunch of southerners going to University of Nunavut, in a faculty entirely run by southern academics and southern support staff. Does it make sense to build housing to let a bunch of non-inuit students and faculty live in when there’s already a housing crisis in all of Nunavut? It is great to dream big, but a University just ain’t it. Focus on finding solutions to the existing problems instead. Baby steps, ITK, Baby steps.
This is a fairly standard “cart before the horse” situation that we’re all used to by now.
High school graduation rate in 2023 was 37%. But not only are we going to build and operate a university, we’re going to pretend it stands a chance of working in any community but Iqaluit.
How about we get half the kids in any given class through high school first …
If we want a University we should be building that on through our College. Yes, I know they are a little ‘dysfunctional.’
Yep, do a proper hire process for senior leadership, recruit the best from across the country/internationally, and throw money at it and it could happen. The core and relationships are there, it just needs skilled and experienced leadership to pull it off.
867, there will always be people like you with the civil servant attitude, find ways not to do something so you don’t have to work at it,I am a northerner,and southerners will continue to come north to work, and yes I am not a big fan of academics, THE Arctic is changing global warming, threats to Arctic security, many more reasons to have a small university so the worlds students along with some northern students to study and learn from this great territory, yes it will take time but look at the southern Canadian university, diversity from all parts of the world, but it’s easier to live in your little bubble.
I could not agree more. 867 needs to consider the implications of residential school which every singular Inuk person is sorting through either first or second hand at this time in history. Inuit are at a pivotal moment rn. To let this opportunity lapse because the rates of graduation and enrolment in Inuit Nunangat and specifically Nunavut are low would be further disservice to Inuit populations. With how how the climate is changing currently and the politics on a national level are escalating Inuit need to act now, even at abysmal rates that we see. those abysmal rates are essential for Inuit to quickly identify, preserve, latch onto and educate others with. TO assume that Inuit can with such haste adapt to colonial institutions after the abrupt, cruel, and shame based institutions took a stab and failed miserably is adding worse to wear and I wont even acknowledge it at this point anymore. take what we can and run with it until such a time as we can heal our populations at large. Which the GN has no problem forgetting but the NGOs seem to be on top of (not top heavy).
Naysayers will say that Inuit shouldn’t get a university because the populations arent doing as well as southern counterparts. How well would these people be doing if their families went through what Inuit went through? I bet the people disagreeing with this concept of a university in Inuit nunangat are southerners who can get jobs in the south and are kings and queens of the gavaman and have respect and reverence in the north and are deeply intimidated by Inuit progressing. That’s why they want to wait until all the Inuit population is on par with southern populations to effect any further change. It’s them holding the Inuit populations back by discouraging the university and by their systemic racism imagining that this is not feasible because the GN dropped the ball so badly on the education act and implementation.
Oh, I hadn’t heard this before – this is interesting. NAC is not currently authorized to accept international students, will this new university receive authorization from the GoC to accept international students do you think? I would imagine that there are a LOT of hoops and that it is a few years away though.
There will always be people like you who are happy to do everything wrong just to say they did it.
When the university fails you know it’ll still pad plenty of ITK resumes. They’ll say “Well shucks, I guess we jumped the gun on this one. Anyway, I’m running for NTI President.”
John K, I tried and failed, but at least I tried, it’s easy to sit back and not try, that is your life sit back and whine, and complain, coming from somebody that’s done nothing with his life, civil servant mentality, thank heavens we have a few people in Nunavut with a dream.
It’s not people don’t want it. People or realists understand that right now we can’t even remotely get children to school, but we don’t see anything on that very often and its sort of a prerequisite to university.
Time, money, focus need to be on the earlier years of education, we have no foundation to build upon and its certainly better to have something working well rather than multiple things not working well but simply existing.
No one is saying you absolutely can’t have a university when things are actually working at an elementary, middle and high-school level. Right now, if anything statistics are going the wrong way or not improving at all year over year. And even as is, those that do make it to graduation, most have well below what would be the equivalent of a grade 12 in most other places in Canada because they just wouldn’t graduate otherwise and that’s why post secondary completion rates are horrible. They’re sunk by first semester if its not Arctic College or NSC which have programs more designed around the capacity of the students they are intaking.
Wanting the world is great, but you have to understand there’s some stepping stones to get there and those are just not in place. Maybe in Iqaluit, but certainly not the rest of NU.
The dream is good though and can be a reality one-day. But is is probably very-premature.
A university isn’t only about education. There has to be other aspects such as research and development that are fundamental in the establishment of any institution. Being an academic isn’t only about teaching, but about the creation of knowledge that builds the credibility and promotes the growth of the institution and the students who attend it. If the goal here is to just turn out graduates at alarmingly low rates without making this endeavor a true institute of higher learning, this is resource that needs to be focused on the k-12 system instead. What will this do that FANS can’t already provide for?
Nunavut’s best and brightest look forward to the prospect of university Down South, most often in Ottawa. I expect, like most young people, they’ll continue leave home for the new experiences of Southern Canada.
A home-grown option won’t change this.
As an inuk and resident of Nunavut, who has three post secondary degrees I could not disagree more. I don’t enjoy living in the south for my education. I did one degree in the north and it was easily my most successful, least stressful but also most looked down upon. So go ahead and make your generalizations. I think you’re mistaking Inuit students looking forward to independence, and not just moving south. I’m not sure if you’re aware but most of Nunavut kids come from overcrowded abusive homes second to the very harsh recent colonisation that’s still ongoing. But what do I know? It’s observers who have no loved experience who make all our choices for us and look where the majority of the population is.
Hey, speak for yourself! I have lots of ‘loved experience’ – sadly not as much as when I was younger and more popular with the ladies.
Educations systems are built on the foundation. Made up of qualified educators. That can ensure that all students. That have the ability and desire to be educated.
Here in the north the education system. Has neither.
I admire the seemingly genuine effort to establish a university in Nunavut.
The present education is teetering on total collapse. There for why invest time and money. In such futile adventure? Begin with the basics. That includes professional educators. With a defined curriculum that matches. What is being taught in the rest of Canada. But leaves room for the cultural needs of the Inuit student
You and the rest of the commentators who have so much to say about k-12 being abysmal in Nunavut we get it. It’s also out of the hands of itk ti nti lol they’re during the government of Nunavut for the state of the education system for k-12. Has any one noticed that its not the government of Nunavut who is trying to see this realized? It’s probably all gn workers with their panties in a bunch worried they’ll be outed for getting paid 4x what they should be making in Nunavut for “consulting” or worse if an inuk were to take their roles lmao!
Inuit can take the role! But let’s face it, Inuit Nunangat is NOT ready for a university right now. First, the graduation rate for high school need to improve significantly. And for the other post that mentioned Inuit students would like to stay closer to home, why are the course at NAC not filled up? It might be in the first year but as the years progress, it could only be less than 10 students graduating with the degree. Unless this university is going to welcome international students (which i highly doubt so as NAC does not), it is such a big waste of money. This university vision shows how out of touch ITK is with Inuit Nunangat.
You must recognize why NAC can’t accept international students. please for the love of god. Also as an educated Inuk with so. much experience and lived experience I’ve never been offered the elusive consultant role. Which I know that southerners just use AI to do their reports, theyre truly laughable. I bet you used AI to make your comment LOL
Better to invest time and money to expand programs for current schooling. For starters: universal attendance for a daily exercise program and sports, school meals, supervised homework. “shops”, music. … Then attendance at university or trade school in the real world.
Ask their territorial norther partners on how it is run here in the arctic. Seek better solutions from other jurisdictions. Is it even possible and ask today in this generation gen x millenials how they would like it.
The past is the past. Colonization is not limited to the Inuits. Colonization is part of the history of most the world.
Be it by the Spaniards, French, English, or any of the other European countries. That traveled globe. In the pursuit of finding new lands. Were colonized by the Europeans.
In many of those conquered countries the native population became slaves.
Some how they survived and have established a society. That values education,
a work ethic, and good leadership.
Colonization was terrible but it’s time to move forward. Stop the complaining. Inuit people are strong, wise, and have all kinds of potential.
How did such a dysfunctional organization as ITK get to take the lead in sitting up a Nunavut University?
They couldn’t organize a bake sale.
Inuit Nunangat University, sponsored by Mastercard.
Bring back both Vocational and Academic classes in all High schools with questionnaires to determine where each student fits in, also for the so called Inuit Qaujimajatuqangi, Teaching and Learning Principles bring back actual teaching on how to prepare skins for sewing and how to prepare country food for the different seasons, and survival and igloo building, University degree not needed for that.
this is seriously ridiculous. i get that they have to spend there 500K funding from mastercard but this whole thing looks rather odd. A university? well its not a university thats for sure. they can use any word they want but its not a university. also, where are the academic faculty coming from? at best it will be zoom classes. and 100 students with 80 staff. i mean come on on a 25000 sq ft campus? who is paying for this over the long haul. i can appreciate the effort but its borderline delusional. Inuit have free education. Go south and bring back new perspectives and new knowsledge for the territory. and fundamentally there are no barriers to inuit and education except a some elbow grease, and where are the core elements for a university. Law, MBA in business, and on and on. Widfery?
Not that anyone should take the arrogant and indifferent idea of an Inuk university seriously, BUT, if one did, it would ONLY make sense yo put the little building in Ottawa; maybe tack on to tge NS premises.
Or set up IU to be completely online and use the money that would have been wasted on buildings to upgrade Arctic internet infrastructure
The government of Nunavut thanks you for your use of AI in your consultant role! Irreplaceable! don’t worry the Inuit Nunangat University will need you use of AI for their documents!