Brandon Sun - PRINT EDITION
Students make their way through the courtyard on the campus of Brandon University on Tuesday. (BRUCE BUMSTEAD/BRANDON SUN)
It appears last year’s faculty strike at Brandon University hasn’t turned students away.
In fact, according to preliminary data, the number of first-year students is up more than 12 per cent from September 2011.
"We’re quite happy with that because we were worried," president Deborah Poff said. "It’s pretty healthy."
At the end of the first week of classes, there were 764 first-year students. At the same time last year, that number was 678.
Overall, the student head count is down 3.5 per cent, which is actually a smaller decline than the university predicted. Last March, enrolment was down 12 per cent. At that time, BU projected it would bounce back by seven per cent and were expecting enrolment to be down five per cent this fall.
"It could go up, it could go down a bit, we don’t know, but right now (enrolment) is looking healthy," Poff said. "We’re very happy."
A faculty strike lasted from Oct. 12 to Nov. 25, which meant no classes for the university’s 3,000 students. It was the longest faculty strike in the province's history.
Following the strike, the university ramped up its recruitment efforts across the region. They also hosted a Winterlude festival in February, which was created as a way to reach out to the community.
"We certainly have been doing more recruitment in the last year," Poff said.
"We’re beefing up our recruitment. We’ve also hired new recruitment officers and we’ve just hired a new person … to focus on First Nations and aboriginal recruitment … So that’s got to help."
» jaustin@brandonsun.com
Republished from the Brandon Sun print edition September 12, 2012
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It appears last year’s faculty strike at Brandon University hasn’t turned students away.
In fact, according to preliminary data, the number of first-year students is up more than 12 per cent from September 2011.
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It appears last year’s faculty strike at Brandon University hasn’t turned students away.
In fact, according to preliminary data, the number of first-year students is up more than 12 per cent from September 2011.
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