Sir Wilfred Grenfell College on the west coast of Newfoundland, which has been waiting for independence from its parent university for years, will have to wait awhile longer, Education Minister Joan Burke said Friday.

The province had promised the college in Corner Brook, a campus of Memorial University of Newfoundland, that it would become an autonomous university by the fall of 2008.

Burke said Friday that will not happen for another year.

"We are just at the point, I guess, with a busy schedule in the house of assembly and certainly the tedious work in developing the legislation, that we didn't have sufficient time … for the full debate that it deserved," Burke told CBC News.

Sir Wilfred Grenfell faculty, as well as community leaders on Newfoundland's west coast, have been lobbying for years for greater independence from Memorial, which has its largest campus in St. John's. There are also campuses in Harlow, England, and the French islands of St-Pierre-Miquelon.

The province had announced in its 2007 budget that it planned to make Grenfell a separate university.