As the number of students coming from Manitoba high schools decreases, the University of Manitoba will have to more actively recruit from outside the province.

Over the next 12 years, the university is anticipating a 14 per cent drop in the number of applications coming from Manitoba high schools.

According to Peter Dueck, director of U of M enrolment services, there are 17,290 grade 12 students in Manitoba for the 2009-10 school year, compared to 13,287 students who are currently in grade one.

“That’s going to have a pretty significant impact on the number of students coming to the University of Manitoba from Manitoba.”

If the university wants to maintain it’s current student population, Dueck said it would have to recruit more aggressively from outside the province.

Currently, the university does comparatively less out of province recruiting than other universities.

“We actually recruit a little in Vancouver and a little in Toronto, but beyond that we don’t have resources to recruit in every province. Some universities would recruit in virtually every province and would recruit quite heavily in every province, but we don’t have the resources to do that,” said Dueck.

However, the university has seen a dramatic increase in its international student population over the past five years, whereas the number of students coming from other provinces has remained rather static, suggesting the university is more successful in its international student recruitment.

“Our efforts outside of Canada have had a better result [ . . . ] than have our efforts in other provinces, where you must remember students have options in Canada,” said Dueck.
“If you’re an Ontario student you could say, ‘Yeah, I could go to the U of M, but I could also go to any of the other universities in Ontario.”

Dueck explained that the University of Manitoba has some of the lowest tuition rates in the English-speaking world, coupled with relatively low living costs in Manitoba.
Since 2005, the number of applications to the U of M has gone up by 16 per cent, from just over 6, 000 to just over 7,000 in 2009.

“There’s a couple of things going on. [ . . . ] One of them is with the general recession, especially in the U.S. and all around. I would have expected an increase in enrolments, period,” explained Laura Brown, associate professor of economics at the University of Manitoba.

“It’s a good time to go back to school when there’s a recession.”

The biggest growth in application numbers has come from international students.
“That’s probably true not only at the University of Manitoba, but at all universities in Canada. Students worldwide are simply becoming a little more mobile, and so they’re applying at more institutions and more institutions outside their country than ever before,” said Dueck.

Often when student are coming from outside the country, the university’s location matters comparatively less.

“For international students, once you’ve made a decision to go to another country [or to] go to another continent, it doesn’t really matter so much if it’s Manitoba or Saskatchewan or whichever province they choose to go,” said Fletcher Barager, Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Manitoba.

A major benefit of this increase in international student population is that it can be quite positive for the economy.

“While they’re here, they’re living here [and] they’re spending their money here. [ … ] University education is an export commodity in that way. In a sense, we only think about ‘exports,’ but we don’t realize that what we’re doing is exporting a service when a student comes here to university,” explained Brown

The University of Winnipeg has also seen an increase in application numbers and a growth in its international student population with its overall enrolment having an increase of 2.56 per cent from 2008-09.

Neil Besner, vice-president (students and international), speculated that the establishment of the faculty of business and economics in 2008 would be the biggest change that would draw potential students.

“The faculty has been without a doubt a generator of significant new enrolment numbers, that’s for sure. I would say, of all of the other potential factors, that’s the most significant,” said Besner.

In terms of recruitment, Besner explained the U of W recruits more actively within the province than outside the province.“The bottom line is, the majority of students who come to the U of W at this point come from within the province.”

U of W recruiters emphasize is the U of W’s downtown location over the south-end location of the U of M.

“One thing that we emphasize is that we are a relatively small compared to the U of M. We’re a mid-size university, whereas the U of M is a large university, but more importantly that we’re downtown,” said Bester.

“We’re not thinking so much about the U of M and what differentiates us. We’re trying to recruit students by bringing them to Manitoba.”