Higher education in Yukon

Higher education in Yukon is shaped by the territory's small population (40,717 people as of Dec. 2018)[1] in a relatively large geographic area.

Although the Yukon University wasn't formally established until 1988 by the College Act, 1988,[3] its predecessor, the Whitehorse Vocational Training School (later to become the Yukon Vocational and Technical Training Centre),[4] opened in 1963 with a focus on teaching skills that enabled adults to gain employment.

[5] In 1977 the territorial government made arrangements with the University of British Columbia to offer a one-time university-level Yukon Teacher Education Program.

"The board of governors of Yukon University holds fiduciary responsibility for the institution and management of the operations, including policies that relate to quality assurance.

[10] This is despite the fact that northern residents and southern academics have been suggesting it since the early 1960s,[11] an attempt was made to establish a university in Yukon and the Northwest Territories in the 1970s,[12] the Science Council of Canada urged its establishment as early as the mid 1970s,[13] and Yukoners have proposed the college become a university in some form or other since 2004.