Craft Beer's Contraction Forces College Brewing Programs to Shut Down

Olds College in central Alberta built its Craft Beverage and Brewery Operations program over more than a decade, training brewers since 2013 through a two-year diploma with hands-on experience. That program is now finished. The final cohort graduates this spring, and the college's teaching brewery closes in June, leaving nine staff members directly affected.

The closure is not an isolated case. SUNY Morrisville shut down its teaching brewery and abandoned plans for a four-year brewing degree back in 2019. The University of California, San Diego ended its brewing courses after a decade of operation. Dakota County Technical College recently canceled its brewing science classes. Programs in Northern Colorado have faced similar fates.

The institutions point to the same underlying cause: the craft beer market that made these programs attractive no longer exists in the same form. Olds College said directly that "the craft beer industry has been on a downward trend for the last few years and has resulted in significantly decreased student enrolment." SUNY Morrisville spokesman Graham Garner put it plainly: "A lot of this decision [to end the program] has to do with the challenges in the craft brewing industry, which has created a very different landscape than when SUNY Morrisville first undertook the operation."

The Brewers Association data backs up that assessment. Last year marked the second consecutive year in which brewery closings outpaced openings, with 268 new breweries launching against 434 closings. Craft beer production dropped 5% overall. Brewers Association staff economist Matt Gacioch framed the moment starkly in the organization's Year in Beer report: "If the craft beer industry is a ship, we can comfortably say we're no longer in the safety of a harbor. The days of relative calm are behind us, and brewers are getting their sea legs in this new, challenging open water."

For the Alberta brewing community, losing Olds College stings beyond the numbers. Andrew Bullied, director of Annex Ales and a board member of the Alberta Small Brewers Association, noted the college played an "instrumental part in helping the [association] get up and running." He said the loss "will make it difficult for people to enter the craft beverage industry," a concern that extends well beyond Alberta as the pipeline of formally trained brewers narrows across North America.

Olds College dean Dennis Beaudoin said he is "deeply sorry" about the announcement, framing it as a long-term sustainability decision driven by enrollment trends and workforce needs. The college did note that two continuing education courses focused on brewing and distilling will remain available, a partial preservation of its craft beverage instruction.

The bigger question hanging over all of this is whether the industry's contraction is temporary turbulence or a permanent reset. Not every brewing program is folding, and workforce demand for skilled brewers does not disappear simply because the expansion era has ended. But with fewer formal training pathways surviving the market correction, the next generation of brewers looking for a structured entry point into the profession will find considerably fewer doors open than those who came before them.