Ontario city wants new university

The City of Barrie approved a preliminary motion Monday to ask Ontario’s government for the province’s next university campus, reports the Barrie Examiner. City council will also commit $14-million toward a new campus of Laurentian University that would cost roughly $60-million to build. Laurentian itself has committed $14-million. The proposed campus would house 3,000 students and open in 2020. Barrie is estimated to have grown by one-third in the past decade to 135,000 people according to the City, with 191,000 in the Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) in 2010, according to Statistics Canada. That makes it the biggest CMA in Ontario, by far, without a university. The Ontario Liberals promised three new campuses during the October election campaign. Ontario will need to add between 50,000 and 104,000 new undergraduates seats by 2025 to meet the growing demand for degrees, according to the new book Academic Reform.