Despite COVID blow, Conestoga’s expansion plans are on track
KITCHENER — Conestoga College is forging ahead with ambitious plans to expand to as many as 50,000 students within the next decade, despite the setbacks of the pandemic.
In its new strategic plan for 2021-24, the college outlines plans to expand tuition to 32,000 students, on eight campuses, within the next decade.
College president John Tibbits said it could go even higher. “I could see, in 10, 15 years, having I would say 45,000, 50,000 students, easily.”
That proposed expansion would follow a period of unprecedented growth over the past decade when the college doubled its enrolment and its square footage.
“It’s an ambitious plan, it’s an aggressive plan, but it’s certainly realizable,” Tibbits said in an interview Friday.
The new strategic plan released this week was developed during the pandemic, calling it “the greatest social and economic challenge we have faced in the history of the Ontario college system.”
The pandemic dealt Conestoga a body blow, with plummeting enrolment, particularly from international students, who made up about half the college’s 22,000 full-time students before the pandemic. In spring 2020, the college was anticipating the pandemic would translate into a budget shortfall of at least $65 million, from increased costs, as well as lost revenues from tuition and ancillary fees such as facility rentals, residence fees, parking, and bookstore and cafeteria sales.
But the college implemented layoffs, offered a buyout to reduce permanent staff, and radically cut costs, even shuttering some campuses and the college rec centre. Those measures, and a decision by the federal government to allow international students to study remotely, meant the college was able to end the 2020-21 year with a surplus.
The pandemic also presents opportunities for the college, Tibbits said. Displaced workers are looking to learn new skills, and the worldwide pandemic highlighted the urgent need for more front-line health workers.
Students are beginning to see the light at the end of the pandemic, and enrolment is up again, with 25,000 students expected this fall.
Given those new realities, the college said expansion is a key priority, with a strong focus on international students, who pay as much as $10,000 more per year in tuition than domestic students.
“We will continue to focus on growth and expanding our footprint across southwestern Ontario,” the plan said.
A sprawling new skilled trades campus — the biggest in the province — is on target to open fall 2022 in the 250,000square-foot former Erwin Hymer plant in Cambridge, and the college also plans to open its eighth campus, in Milton, by 2024. Consolidating its trades programs will free up space for further expansions at existing campuses in Waterloo, Cambridge and Doon.
Within a decade, the college aims to have at least 4,000 fulltime students on each campus, and to expand satellite hubs across the province, including in remote and rural communities, to train health-care workers and carry out English-language testing.
International students will continue to be a big focus, Tibbits said.
International students pay a heavy premium in tuition, they’re keen to learn skilled trades, and they will help fill the huge shortages of skilled labour — in trades, information technology, as personal care and other health workers — since many choose to stay after graduation.
“Let’s be honest,” he said. “There’s just not enough young people around to meet the needs of skilled labour. The only way to do that is through immigration.”