Key Internal Stakeholders: Students

• Author: Cheryl Foy
• Pages: 34-45

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Key Internal Stakeholders: Students

A. SOME BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Students are a key university stakeholder and it is important to understand

them. In , there were approximately . million full- and part-time

students in the Canadian university system. Chapter  addresses univer-

sity nances, but it’s safe to say for all universities that students contribute

a signicant portion of university income, and since  “government

income has stagnated while income from students has steadily increased,

mainly due to increases in international student numbers.”

Although described as one stakeholder, the student body is not homo-

geneous, of course. is one stakeholder is made up of many groups. e

university structure itself divides students by level (undergraduate, gradu-

ate, postgraduate), by faculty, and by program of study within a faculty.

e student body is also made up of many racial, social, religious, ethnic,

socio-economic, and other groups.

Students are changing. Generation X has dierent characteristics than

Generation Y or millennials. Next are Generation Z and Generation Alpha.

1 “Facts and Stats,” Universities Canada (31 July 2018), online: Universities Canada

www.univcan.ca/universities/facts-and-stats.

2 Alex Usher, The State of Postsecondary Education in Canada, 2020 (Toronto: Higher

Education Strategy Associates, 2020) at 31.