New side-effect of COVID-19: A sudden surge in applications for nursing school
Ontario universities are seeing interest spike in health-related fields
When the pandemic struck last spring, Rido Creer struggled with whether to ride it out with his family in Regina, or make the move to Toronto to study nursing at Ryerson University. He chose nursing.
“I was seeing nurses, since March, working tirelessly,” says Creer. “A part of me wanted to defer until next year but the inspiration that I got from all working nurses and nursing students right now, like none of them were taking a break … because patients aren’t just going to stop being patients.”
Creer is not alone in being inspired by the health-care workers toiling on the front lines of the global pandemic, as hospital ICUs fill up and COVID-19 continues to take its deadly toll. Universities across the province have seen a surge in applications from students seeking to enrol in health-related fields, with nursing programs alone seeing a 73-per-cent jump for the upcoming academic year.
According to the Ontario Universities’ Application Centre (OUAC), they received a total of 10,637 applications for nursing programs by the Jan. 15 deadline, up from 6,157 applications last year, when Creer applied.
In fact, university applications are up, overall. OUAC received close to 472,238 applications for the upcoming academic year, up from 461,415 for 202021, with the most popular programs being commerce and business (88,233), biological and biomedical sciences (59,413) and engineering (49,980).
This, despite a school year unlike any other. With shuttered residences, online classes and limited access to labs, campuses have been mostly deserted and without the communal scholastic and social life that make them such a draw. And while the vaccine rollout gives hope, few universities have yet to announce what September will look like for students.
But that hasn’t stopped students from applying to universities in droves, with nursing seeing the biggest change in applications for the 2021-22 academic year out of 24 programs listed on OUAC’s database. And along with biological and biomedical sciences, which saw a 15-per-cent jump, other healthrelated programs have also proved popular, including psychology with 9,292 applicants, up 44 per cent from last year.
COVID-19 has had a tremendous impact on how students choose and apply to their respective programs of studies, says Glen Jones, professor of higher education studies at the University of Toronto.
“We are talking about daily media conversations about the tremendous importance of health care … and the importance of these fields are resonating with young people who are trying to make decisions of where to go next,” says Jones.
Nursing school hopefuls worry about how competitive nursing programs have become across Ontario, as the profession’s popularity increases.
Ryerson University, for instance, has received 1,872 applications for the 209 spots in its nursing program.
Tuition fees for first-year nursing programs are $7,140, adding up to at least $29,000 over four years of study. The deadline to accept offers of admission is in June.
Kathy Tran, a student at Tommy Douglas Secondary School in Woodbridge, has applied to six different nursing programs. She worries about the effect virtual learning could have on her studies and whether it will prepare her for a real-life workplace.
“It is kind of scary, I can’t even lie,” says Tran about going to university during a pandemic. “I feel like with simulation labs, you are still learning but it is not realistic.”
At Ryerson, staff try to give nursing students first-hand experience, treating them as part of the health-care system and providing them with physical clinical placements, says Maher El-Masri, director of the Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing. They also aim to provide online-learning that is realistic, including simulation labs, he says.