FNU Enrolment in 2015 Fell 5500: Healey
Impact from technical college move, TELS boosting USP
The Fiji National University recorded a reduction in student enrolments from 34,524 in 2014 to 29,035 in 2015.
This was revealed by Vice Chancellor Professor Nigel Healey yesterday during the University’s 2015 Annual Report submission to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Social Affairs.
The enrolments were recorded as per head count numbers with some students enrolling for only one course as opposed to a full load of courses.
According to Professor Healey, “the order of the decline was roughly about one seventh, so it was quite a significant reduction.” FNU also noted a decrease of about 20 per cent in full time student enrolments for the various colleges with the exception of the College of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences.
“There are some reasons for this decline. One is the shift of the technical college of Fiji in 2015 that has taken over the delivery of TVET programmes at levels one and two so we no longer deliver those and that had an impact on both engineering and some of the trade courses in Business and Hospitality,” Professor Healey said.
He said the introduction of the Tertiary Education Loans Scheme (TELS) also had a role in the fluctuation of enrolment numbers.
“It is also clear that the advent of the Tertiary Scholarship Loans Board (TSLB) TELS scheme has had a very positive impact with making tertiary education accessible, but one of the immediate consequences was that it reduced price sensitivity,” he said.
“Our courses were less expensive than the University of the South Pacific but in the world of TELS students were paying for the courses upfront so their response to the price difference was muted.” He said the competing university benefitted in that aspect as students took advantage of the education access.
Edited by Naisa Koroi