BU’s future

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/09/2011 (5472 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Enrolment in Winnipeg’s two universities has soared to record levels.

But for yet another year, Brandon University’s enrolment is practically flat.

And that has left BU officials going back to the drawing board to find out why the institution has again had trouble boosting its numbers.

As you read in the Brandon Sun yesterday, final enrolment for the fall term at BU is sitting at 3,106 students — about the same as last year.

While full-time enrolment is sitting at 2,210 students — up slightly from 2010 — part-time enrolment is down slightly, sitting at 896 students.

There were, on average, a couple of hundred more full-time and part-time students in the first part of this decade. And that was a big jump from the 1990s, when BU’s enrolment averaged about 2,500.

As we’ve said here before, BU has a few problems.

While the shovels are in the ground for BU’s new $20-million Healthy Living Centre, the university hasn’t physically expanded much in recent years.

While the universities of Manitoba and Winnipeg are growing like weeds, BU remains potbound in the roughly nine square city blocks it occupies in the city’s west end.

Sure, it doesn’t offer all the programs that a larger university does. And it got beat up in a Maclean’s magazine ranking.

But most students will decide whether to enter the workforce, attend a college or a university based on practical and personal situations.

For example, admission to Brandon University doesn’t require a minimum high school average. So BU is often used by students who perhaps didn’t perform well in high school and need a year in a smaller university to get in scholastic shape before moving on to a larger institution.

Or perhaps BU will be selected for its fine school of music or simply because it’s close to a hometown in Westman.

But it’s a small university that isn’t getting any bigger.

We believe it needs to grow its physical size in order to attract new students with new programs.

Look at the marvellous job the once-shabby U of W has done to rejuvenate itself by buying land and building amazing new facilities throughout Winnipeg’s downtown and into its west end. The U of W this year shattered the 10,000-student mark for the first time.

That’s why BU must start acquiring any land that opens up in its vicinity. Land such as the old Fleming School site should have, from the start, been thought of as a place for the university to expand.

So while BU officials will try some new initiatives — such as engaging students earlier the application process, begin taking conditional admissions based on a student’s Grade 11 marks — it needs a bit of a “wow” factor.

Clearly, the Healthy Living Centre will help do that for some, but there’s much more work to be done at BU.

That’s why, for example, in Brandon it matters a lot that we get a fair hearing of our pleas for a medical school.

We’re not sure what Progressive Conservative Leader Hugh McFadyen was thinking yesterday when he blurted out during a live leaders debate on CJOB 68 that a medical school in Brandon was “not practical.”

That’s not very helpful to Brandon University.

And it’s also a kick in the teeth to the hundreds of people across Westman who have formed a grassroots movement in recent years to put pressure on the province to build a medical school in Brandon.

While NDP Leader Greg Selinger didn’t exactly say on-air yesterday he was in favour of the project, he didn’t dismiss it out of hand.

All McFadyen had to say was that he would be looking forward to the results of the provincially commissioned feasibility study currently underway.

But by taking a stand against a BU medical school, McFadyen has provided voters with the information they will need on election day if they care about BU and its future in this community.