By Jeff Labine

Enrollment up at P.A. Sask Polytech campus

Jan 21, 2017 | 11:00 AM

Enrollment at the Saskatchewan Polytechnic campus in Prince Albert is going up.

The local campus has seen a steady increase in enrollment of about 30 per cent since 2011. A major driver for that increase is because more Aboriginal students are signing up for the school’s programs. Between the 2014-15 and 2015-16 school years alone, enrollment for Aboriginal students rose by 17 per cent.

About 40 per cent of the more than 3,400 student body is self-declared Aboriginal students.

Anne Neufeld, vice-president of academic and provost for Saskatchewan Polytechnic, described the P.A. campus as the gateway to the North.

She added enrollment continues to increase because of specific programming. The programs which saw a notable increase in enrollment included food service, continuing care assistant, early child care education and office administration.

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“We also saw a number of our smaller programs where their enrollment doubled,” Neufeld said. “We have been growing as a provincial institution as well. As far as facility expansion, at the moment our top requirement is our Saskatoon campus. We’re actually in Saskatoon operating 11 sites. You can imagine that that isn’t an efficient way to operate a post-secondary institution and it is not the best for our students.”

She said administration keeps an eye on all campuses but at the moment, there are no immediate plans to expand the P.A. campus. She mentioned they are looking at other options to increase enrollment such as offering more online programing.

“There’s more than one way to deal with enrollment than with build and mortar,” Neufeld added. “As a polytechnic, we reassess our program mix on an annual basis and we are just in the progress of doing that. We definitely add program capacity and when we have a seat we always want to make sure that we’re at 100 per cent enrollment as possible.”

She mentioned enrollment is expected to dip a bit because they have eliminated a program being offered at the P.A. campus. Generally, the local campus has a high graduation to hire success rate of about 90 per cent.

Jeff Labine is paNOW’s health and education reporter. He can be reached at Jeff.Labine@jpbg.ca or tweet him @labinereporter.