UNBC sees slight increase in enrollment this year

UNBC’s enrollment numbers have seen a slight increase over last year.

As of October 15, the total number of students rose by just shy of 5%.

Last month, Maclean’s magazine ranked the school No. 1 among primarily undergraduate universities in Canada.

“That’s certainly part of it and we were No. 1 last year as well,” says Provost Dan Ryan. “I think that has a lot to do with it. The reason we are No. 1 has a lot to do with our faculty and our staff in terms of the learning environment that students experience when they come to UNBC.”

The school’s undergraduate student enrollment grew by 6% in the last year but the number of graduate students actually decreased slightly.

“That’s something that we’ll be concentrating on over the next little while – making the processes simpler to get students in and to find further funding for our graduate students to help support our faculty and staff doing their research.”

Ryan says the health sciences, nursing first nations studies and forestry programs saw some of the biggest increases.

He says the school still has room to grow.

“We do want to continue increasing the number of students coming to UNBC. We have a great university, a great faculty and we have space for more students so we’ll be looking for ways to increase those numbers over the next few years.”

Ryan says there was also a significant uptick in the number of self-identified aboriginal students enrolled at the school – an increase of just over 17%, which works out to about 60 more students.