Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) in Winnipeg has experienced a substantial uptick in year over year enrolment. President Cheryl Pauls says numbers are up ten per cent across undergraduate and graduate programs, with particularly strong enrolments from a first-year students perspective. There are several other metrics also showing a strong rebound this school year.
"We're up from last year with incoming students, so first-year students almost 40%" explained Pauls. "We've had an enrolment dip the last four years through pandemic times, and this year we've recovered very close to 2019 numbers with incoming students."
She added, during the pandemic, the post-secondary school had very strong retention numbers, and they are still on par with the 2023-24 retention numbers from last year. There are 694 students participating in CMU classes this year, which works out to about 630 full-time equivalents.
"Thrilled" with quality of new students
"We're just thrilled to see the incoming class, and I'll say these incoming students are probably the most confident and courageous we've seen in a long time," shared Pauls. "It's as if they got to work through a lot of stuff in high school already, coming out of the pandemic, and so there's just an incredible energy and joy and courage to go ahead, and sort of a strength of independence to go about university. We're thrilled with what we're seeing in the quality of students."
Pauls also highlighted the volleyball, basketball and soccer rosters for CMU Blazers athletics are full, and the same goes for other areas, too.
"Students participating in student leadership, strong with students giving leadership, say in Chapel, but also working with a range of student service groups," she said. "Then also participating in International Student Council and Indigenous Student Council... just a wide range of students working together for the health of all."
Why such a substantial uptick in year over year numbers?
"We've renewed our long standing programs, and people have interest in Arts and Humanities and Business and Communications and Music and so on, so that's good," she said. "We've also added Social Work, and that's brought new energy."
Pauls also points to the fact school representatives have again been able to go places and make relationships with students while they're in high school.
"You couldn't do that for a few years, and so that capacity to be places has been really significant."
Pauls believes they may have been able to even surpass 2019 enrolment figures if there wasn't a cap on international students that brought those registrations down for the start of this school year.
"We're actually, in terms of domestic students, ahead of where we were in 2019, we're just lower on international," she added.
You can listen to the conversation with Cheryl Pauls, below.