First‑year enrolment is up

First-year and graduate student enrolments are up at Dalhousie. (Nick Pearce photo)

There are lots of fresh faces at Dalhousie this fall: with 1,943 new first-year students, the university is enjoying a six per cent increase in our entering class over last year.

“Interest among prospective first-year students continues to grow and this bodes well for the university in the coming years,” says Asa Kachan, Dalhousie’s Registrar.

The number of graduate students at Dalhousie is also up: a 3.6 per cent increase equates to 3,547 students doing Masters or PhD degrees.

But even with first-year and graduate student enrolments up, overall Dalhousie enrolments are down 1.8 per cent, according to figures just released by the Association of Atlantic Universities (AAU).

The AAU’s 2007-2008 Preliminary Survey of Enrolments reveals student numbers are on a downward trend at most of the region’s 17 universities. Enrolments are down an average of 2.6 per cent throughout the Atlantic region.

But the decline is not unexpected. Dalhousie just celebrated its largest-ever graduating class. More than 3,200 students received diplomas during spring convocation ceremonies. Those students were part of the “double cohort,” referring to the large high school graduating class in Ontario four years ago when that province ended its fifth year of high school, Grade 13, resulting in twice as many university-bound students. Most of those students completed their undergraduate degrees last spring.

“In light of the size of the graduating class, we knew we would see our overall numbers drop but we were delighted by the interest in Dalhousie by so many new first-year students,” says Ms. Kachan.

In total, Dalhousie has 280 fewer full and part-time students and a 2007/08 student body of 15,155 students.