Quest University suspends operations amid financial struggles

Quest University Canada, a small private institution that offered contemplative long-form classes in rural British Columbia, has decided to suspend operations after years of financial struggles.

Quest was created by the late David Strangway after the legendary physicist and academic leader left the presidency of the University of British Columbia in 1997, and it offers a unique approach to undergraduate liberal arts and sciences that emphasises individualised and immersive study.

The university’s board of governors voted to suspend academic programming after the current academic year ends this April, saying the institution – with fewer than 200 students at its Garibaldi Highlands campus about an hour north of Vancouver – needed to “focus on restructuring finances and operations”.

“Several factors contributed to this difficult decision,” the university said in announcing the decision. “Although Quest continues to explore financing options and remains hopeful, it has been unable to secure additional funding for ongoing operations beyond the spring.”

The university’s buildings and surrounding land have been put up for sale, although Quest officials insisted that they were not giving up on the possibility of reopening in some other location or format.

“Quest is still a university whether it resides in the Garibaldi Highlands, down by Oceanfront, or smack in the middle of Brackendale,” it said. “We are much more than a piece of land.”

For now, however, university leaders said their chief immediate priority “is to protect our current and prospective students”. Although Quest is private, the province’s Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills offered similar assurances, saying that the UBC, the University of Victoria, Thompson Rivers University and Capilano University will accept transfer credits from Quest.

Also, about 60 per cent of Quest’s students are US citizens, and “Quest has a number of US universities with similar programmes that will fully recognise Quest programme credits,” the ministry said.

The ministry said it “holds a financial security from Quest University to secure student tuition refunds, if necessary”. Quest said it has offered students transition and counselling services.

The struggles that Quest appears to be facing are common to small tuition-dependent institutions and should not be seen as discouragement for badly needed innovation in higher education or a repudiation of block-style intensive class structures, said one expert in the field, Traci Freeman, of Endicott College in Massachusetts.

Dr Freeman is the dean of the Endicott Centre for Teaching and Learning, and the outgoing vice-president of the International Block and Intensive Learning and Teaching Association, a forum for assisting such institutions in North America, Australia and China. She said she did not know the details of the situation at Quest but said she expected its problems centred on a lack of financial flexibility.

“If anything, colleges seem more willing to innovate since the pandemic,” Dr Freeman said. “The problem is that small-college experiences – and the block plan in particular – are very resource-intensive. Fewer students and their families are able to pay the steep price for these experiences, and if a college is already in financial trouble when they try to offer a different kind of education, they may lack the necessary resources to invest in change, or they may be so far gone that their fates are inevitable.”

Quest’s vice-president for academic affairs, Jeff Warren, said the institution’s leaders would be willing to reflect later on the situation, but for now they wanted to devote their attention to helping their students.

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com