ENROLMENT MILESTONE
St. Clair College celebrates 10,000 students
Fuelled by growth in international education, St. Clair College has more than 10,000 full-time students enrolled for the first time in the school’s 50-year history.
The college, which had 5,222 full-time students in 2000, has more than doubled its enrolment to 10,539 during a period in which the region’s population was actually dwindling.
Enrolment increased by about 12 per cent, year over year.
If you include part-time students, apprenticeships and adult education, the number swells to 11,953 students. Those numbers don’t include the Continuing Education program.
“It’s symbolic for us, we’ve been trying to get to 10,000 for a decade,” said Patti France, president of St. Clair College.
“We’ve been trying to diversify our programming pathways and increase our international students. This is really symbolic of those efforts.”
In addition to surpassing 10,000 students, the college will also reach 100,000 graduates with next month’s fall convocation ceremonies.
St. Clair saw a near doubling of international students over last year from 581 to 1,100 this fall at its Windsor and Chatham campuses.
The school’s Toronto campus experienced a 54 per cent increase over last year from 940 students to 1,450.
The prime source for international students has been China and India.
“I can remember not long ago when we only had 200 international students,” said France, who has seen enrolment grow by 24 per cent in three years.
“We’ve been focused on increasing that. We’re working with agents overseas, building relationships. Staff are being sent over two or three times a year to visit schools personally.”
France added that perhaps the best advertising for the college has been the international students who come to St. Clair.
“Word of mouth has been huge,” France said. “With social media, kids are tweeting to friends and family back home. They’re making videos.
“We had an international students’ orientation event last week and the social media from that was tremendous.
“The college’s profile and its reputation have been raised.”
There has also been a greater emphasis on recruiting international students for the Windsor and Chatham campuses.
“We’ve been trying to get these students down to the Windsor area because of the tremendous economic benefits to the region,” France said.
“We doubled the number of international students on our two regional campuses last year and our goal was to double it again this year and we basically did that.
“We feel there’s a lot of room for growth there.”
France also credited the college’s steadily improving retention rate of students for keeping enrolment up. The average rate of retention this fall was about 81 per cent.
Bolstering the college’s sales pitch has been the aggressive expansion of programming and upgrading of infrastructure during the last 15 years.
The latest program launches include graduate certificates in human resources management, web and interactive advertising and event management.
A National Powerline Training Centre will also open late next year on the college’s Chatham campus to expand the Power line Technician program.
Pending Ministry of Education approval, the college hopes to be able to offer two new degree programs as early as Sept. 2018.
The four-year degree programs are in business administration/ information technology communications and social justice and legal studies.
With its business programs now surpassing 2,000 students, France said “a new face is required” for that segment of the college.
“We’re discussing what that might be,” France said. “Is it a building, a tower .... We need to put some time, effort and money into it.”
France also expects to break ground within 12 months on the college’s new sports park concept, which includes an indoor soccer field.
“We’re working on the conceptual drawings and those should be released for people to see in the next couple of months,” France said. “We have to replenish our sports fields after we lost some to expropriation for the (Gordie Howe) bridge project.”
France said the college is well positioned financially to continue its growth having run an $8-million surplus in the last fiscal year.