Northern institutions look to GTA for growth: nearly 25,000 extra students to hit Ontario universities in 15 years.

• Author: Stewart, Nick
• Position: TRAINING & EDUCATION

Northern Ontario institutions could play a big role in coping with the 25,000 additional students set to join the province's university system in the next 15 years, according to heads of two northern universities.

According to a recent report issued by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO), an arm's-length agency of the province, the majority of that growth is due to flow from the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).

Most Northern Ontario schools have already recognized this reality and have begun to move to address the flourishing need, says Fred Gilbert, president and vice-chancellor of Thunder Bay's Lake-head University.

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"Many Northern schools are already taking steps by establishing partnerships around the outskirts of the the area, like Laurentian has with Georgian, or as we have with our new campus in Orillia," says Gilbert, adding that one-third of GTA students choose to attend school outside the region.

"There is capacity in the system; there needs to be recognition of that, and in addition, recognize that a lot of universities have been entrepreneurial out of necessity by setting up around the GTA. That just makes sense."

However, this perspective isn't necessarily shared by some provincial agencies, including HEQCO.

Its recent report also suggested a series of policy options to meet the growing demand, with a singular focus on the Greater Toronto Area itself.

These range from giving select colleges a role in baccalaureate programming, to the creation of new technical universities. However, the report ultimately places a strong emphasis on options such as the creation an entirely new undergraduate university as well'as an "open" university, rather than the further development of existing satellite campuses.

Gilbert, surprised by the report's conclusions, flatly disagrees.

"They made the wrong choice," he says. "They didn't do a fair comparison between costs, and the idea of branch campuses was dismissed in a paragraph. I really feel they've overlooked this option."

As an example of how the idea of branch campuses can work, Gilbert points to Lake-head's Orillia campus, which currently has a student population of roughly 450. That number is expected to nearly triple to 1,200 once a full-fledged permanent campus is built there by September 2010.

These kinds of initiatives are necessary...