Hamilton universities post highest first-year enrolment despite pandemic

In September, some Hamilton post-secondary schools welcomed their largest class of first-year students in history.

Both McMaster University and Redeemer University, a Christian liberal arts school in Ancaster, reported their highest first-year enrolment numbers ever, bucking the attendance and financial hurdles facing other academic institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The numbers show that Hamilton's universities are persisting despite new restrictions on in-person education and a transition toward remote learning.

We know there are other universities who have fewer first-year students than last year, but McMaster remains a very popular destination," wrote Wade Hemsworth, McMaster spokesperson, in an email to The Spectator.

Hemsworth says the university won't have final enrolment numbers until November, but has already determined that this first-year class is its largest in its 133-year history.

At Redeemer, enrolment is up 13.5 per cent over last year, with 358 new students enrolling in the school for the 2020-21 academic year.

Shannon McBride, spokesperson for the university, credits the increase to the school's reduced tuition costs, which were lowered prior to the pandemic.

This year, we welcomed 358 new students, which includes 283 undergraduate, 59 bachelor of education and 16 gap-year students in Redeemer's Act Five program," wrote McBride in an email to The Spectator.

In 2019, the university reduced its tuition by 42 per cent to $9,800 for Canadian undergraduate students, McBride said.

The universities' good news appears to have bucked a downwards trend that other post-secondary schools have encountered during the pandemic.

Overall enrolment at Mohawk College is down 11 per cent, chief operating officer Paul Armstrong recently told Hamilton Mountain News.

The decrease is less than the 20 per cent drop the college had forecast last spring.

In July, Mohawk College laid off as many as 200 full- and part-time staff in anticipation of decreasing enrolment. The college predicted a 75 per cent drop in international students, who typically pay $16,000 per year in tuition.

Mohawk has projected a $50-million revenue shortfall caused by the enrolment drop.

Bill Steinburg, spokesperson for Mohawk, says the fall was still stronger than anticipated.

At this point, we are actually only down 11 per cent to date, compared to 2019-20. And we hope to exceed our spring targets in January, as well," he said.

Jacob Lorinc's reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative. The funding allows him to report on stories about education.