Nipissing University feeling growth pains

With an unexpected rise in student enrollment at Ontario Universities the administrations, including Nipissing, are struggling to meet demands, the Nipissing University Board of Governors heard Tuesday during their regular monthly meeting.

Nipissing President Dennis Mock said that although the McGuinty government recently infused billions of dollars into education the money is not keeping up with the rate of increase at the university level.

“We were very pleased when the Liberal Government on the basis of the Bob Rae Report announced 6.2 billion-dollar investment in post secondary education, that was very positive,” says Mock.

“The issue that we are having is that we are having increased numbers of students coming into the university over what they had projected, so therefore the money we receive per student is going down. That’s the issue that we’ve got to address.”

Mock says the growth in student enrollment is an unexpected issue, and that the colleges are not experiencing at the same rate, therefore, the colleges are not in the same situation.

“Whereas we are actually experiencing to date in the last two years about fourteen thousand students in the Ontario system above the projection. And by the time the five years are finished it could be as high as forty-five to forty-six thousand students.”

Mock says there is no one single answer as to what is driving students to universities over colleges.

“It appears in the knowledge-based economy, that students want to go to university.”

“They start out in university and then go to a college, the notion of going to college first and then going to university is not as popular as it was before, but see these are all generalisations,” he says.

Mock also says if the growth trend continues and funding does not keep up, current and future activities and programs could feel a pinch .

“We have an annual accountability agreement with the government where we lay out exactly what we would like to do in terms of increasing quality and hiring profs and bringing in new programs … the types of extra-curricular types of activities were trying to do, but we have to be realistic we can only do that with the type of budget that we’re given.”

“And if the budget you’re given is less per student than you expect than obviously you have to pull back on one of those things. So we’re really trying to convince the government that it would be a good idea to allow us to try perform to that lofty level that they defined when they had the 6.2 on the table.”

Mock will meet with the provincial finance minister in January to discuss the issue.