English CEGEPs in Montreal are scrambling to accommodate students after large increases in applications this year, according to Geneviève Lapointe, communications director of the Service Régional d'Admission du Montréal (SRAM).
The schools, which provide students with vocational training or pre-university classes for two years after high school, received more than 2700 more applications this year than last year, Lapointe said.
SRAM co-ordinates the application process for 13 Montreal CEGEPs.
According to Lapointe, nearly half of these applications were for Vanier and John Abbott colleges, two of the largest English CEGEPs in Montreal.
Dawson College, the third school, has also seen an increase in admission requests of 20 per cent over the previous year, according to the Montreal Gazette.
This has led students whose grades would normally have qualified them for admission to be squeezed out of the CEGEP system, according to Dawson communications director Donna Varrica.
“There were about 400 applicants [at Dawson] this year . . . that have qualified and were refused due to lack of space,” said Varrica. “We were always able to accommodate them in one program or another. It’s the first time we have had to refuse a qualified student.”
The rise in demand for post-secondary education has been felt in the francophone community as well, Lapointe said. According to the CBC, the government of Quebec has given both French and English CEGEPs additional funding in hopes of increasing student capacity.
“There are more [French] institutions, obviously, so it’s not felt as acutely as among English CEGEPs, but the problem was there too,” said Lapointe.
“There are 48 CEGEPs in Montreal, of which only five are English speaking,” said Varrica. “If you consider the anglophone sector and the francophone sector, it’s kind of lopsided. Any trend that you see will be more pronounced within the smaller group.”
“Whenever there was an economic crisis, there would be more applications in the colleges,” said Lapointe. “We could assume that a part of this situation is related to this fact.”
Varrica said while the economy plays a role, she thinks it is not a large factor.
“We’re at the tail end of a demographic bubble, so there are just more people out there,” she said. “The main thing is to just get more space, and the staff that goes with it.”
However, citing a projected downturn in demographics, Varrica said the increase in demand is most likely temporary.
“We have to make sure that we don’t overextend ourselves by getting into real estate or long-term leases . . . or hiring teachers.”
Options for students who have difficulty entering a CEGEP include seeking post-secondary education outside of large cities such as Montreal, as well as taking courses in the evening for credits while not formally admitted to a particular program, then reapplying in the winter semester.
“Some people are not willing to consider [alternatives],” said Lapointe. “Action has to come from the colleges and the Ministry of Education … [but] you have to put things in perspective. It’s a question of choice, and there is a choice. It has to be evaluated.”