Recent statistics from Carleton revealed fewer graduate students enrolled this year despite a two per cent increase in overall enrolment.
According to the university’s Office of Institutional Research & Planning (OIRP), a total of 30,855 students have enrolled for the 2018-19 academic year—an increase of 439 from last year’s enrolment record, and a continuation of a 20-year growth trend that began following a brief dip in 1998.
But, after looking more into the numbers, Wesley Petite, a political science PhD student at Carleton, found that while overall enrolment has been up this year, graduate students’ enrolment has been lower than most years, according to OIRP’s initial statistics released on Sept. 8.
Carleton’s total population grew due to an increase in undergraduate students, but the university has had fewer graduate students enrolled this year compared to last year.
“While this is only a matter of hundreds, unless there was an unrecorded round of enrolments, enrolment does not seem to be up this year,” Petite said.
Graduate enrolment numbers from OIRP have since been updated to show that 3,899 students enrolled at Carleton this year, a continued decrease of 196 students from last year’s 4,095 student population, according to data released on Sept. 8.
Rosemary O’Hearn, Carleton vice-president (academic) Jerry Tomberlin’s executive assistant, said in an email that the September results were only preliminary and do not give an accurate picture of changes from last year to this year, which is why they are continually updated.
“In particular, for various reasons, graduate enrolments always evolve later than undergraduate numbers,” O’Hearn said.
She said annual enrolment comparisons must be from the same date from each year to ensure that they are both final numbers for that year.
Etienne Lefebvre, a neuroscience master’s student, said graduate enrolment numbers might have been affected by the four-week CUPE 2424 strike that ended in April this year.
“As a first-year master’s student, I had to go through last year’s application process in the middle of the CUPE 2424 strike,” Lefebvre said. “One of the side effects of the strike was that many applicants had to wait till April to receive their admission decision.”
He added that several graduate applicants at Carleton accepted other offers from other universities because results from other schools were available to them as early as February.
Greg Aulenback, Carleton’s strategic initiatives manager, said in an email that the CUPE 2424 strike delayed registration for new graduate students but “everything was back on track by the time classes began this fall.”
O’Hearn said 14 more graduate students have enrolled at Carleton as of this week, and numbers will continue to be updated from the OIRP throughout the term.
—With files from Temur Durrani
Photo by Jasmine Foong
