THUNDER BAY -- Confederation College is increasing its budget for recruiting from overseas as part of an effort to counteract a continuing decline in the enrolment of students from northwestern Ontario.
The college reports that over the past few years, the number of students from the northwest has dropped by between 350 and 400.
College President Jim Madder said the impact of demographic changes in the region is “an absolute dead straight line. It’s a decline of about two and a half per cent in the youth population per year, and that continues on for at least eight years or so.”
Madder told tbnewswatch.com the college has circumvented the decline largely by attracting international students.
He added that five years ago there were only about 30 international students enrolled, while today the number is 500 full-time students.
Over the same period, the college has doubled the number of students coming from southern Ontario, to a total of about 500.
Current full-time enrolment at the college is 3,400, down about 55 from last year, leaving Madder to describe the situation as “bouncing around, sort of, but stably because we’re attracting students” from elsewhere.
Madder said many other areas of Ontario are affected by the declining number of youth.
“It’s the same sort of trend that we have," he said. "We hit it a bit earlier, but it’s declining unless you’re in the Greater Toronto Area.”
More than half of the overseas students at Confederation have come from India, but Madder said the college is wary of becoming too dependent on any one country.
“Actually we’re still continuing to grow in India while we’re starting to put more of our resources into places like China, Ukraine or other countries … countries that have a growing middle class that want their young people educated,” he said.
Dealing with demographic changes in Canada involves more than the expansion of recruiting efforts.
Madder said the college is working hard “to develop programming and reasons for people to come to us.”
He pointed to new student accommodation, a wellness centre and a technology hub which is set to open in about two years.
The hub will allow the college to add other types of manufacturing programs to its current offerings.
The college president noted that recruiting students from outside the region allows the college to maintain existing programs, so “we need to look very carefully as to what programs they are interested in as well,” he said.
“If we didn’t have those 750 students — the additional 250 from the south and the 500 from overseas — we’d be significantly smaller than we currently are.”
