On Campus

Maritime university enrollments down

Newly released university enrollment data from the Maritime Provinces Higher Education Commission (MPHEC) show that the numbers of students originally from the Maritime provinces attending Maritime universities declined by 7.8% between 2003-04 and 2007-08 (from 54,620 to 50,367).

Earlier this year, the MPHEC reported that the numbers of Maritimers enrolling at Memorial University of Newfoundland increased by 15% between 2007-08 and 2006-07. In fact, in 2007-08 there are were over ten times as many Maritimers at Memorial compared to 7 years earlier.

I expect the population’s changing age structure is at work here to some extent, but I continue to wonder about the role of rising tuition fees, if any, in these trends. For example, tuition fees at Memorial are $2,633 per year on average while students in Nova Scotia pay $5,868 per year on average.

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