Numbers from the Association for Atlantic Universities show first-year enrolment is up by 9.2 per cent this year, with 675 full-time, first-year students at STU.
While the university is happy with the modest increase, STU spokesman Jeffrey Carleton said they’ve already started recruiting for next year.
“It’s like an athletics season, whereby we got the numbers last week, we sat down [and] we looked at them. We were happy for one day,” said Carleton.
“The next day, you’re already working on September 2012, because it’s a new season every time you go out. It’s a new crop of students.
“We were pleased more so because it tells us that some of the new things that we’ve been trying have been successful. So, we know that we have an exceptional…bachelor of arts.”
In a highly competitive market, recruiters have to figure out a way to show how STU is different from other schools.
“We don’t market St. Thomas. What we do in our publications and in our communications with students and you see it in our website, is [showing] what’s happening in St. Thomas today.”
The recruiters have been travelling since the second week of September. They’ve been going to high schools and fairs in various parts of the world.
However, they don’t just leave to go on the trips randomly which are paid for from the administration and communications budgets.
“We look at methodologies. We look at scheduling. We look at target markets. We look at all of our data, where we’re performing well…or where we haven’t performed well in the past,” Carleton said.
“We work on our publications. We work on our contact strategy. We look at any sort of new information technologies we can use.”
Carleton said they are focusing on international students for a time because “there’s…the advantages that international students bring to a campus.
Different perspectives [and] different viewpoints.”
Full-time international enrolment is up this year too, with 80 international students on campus compared to 71 last year.
International students are on the university’s horizon because the Maritimes have seen a decrease in the number of students graduating from high schools.
This has forced the university to look outside of the Atlantic region toward Ontario, western Canada, New England and China.
“We’re still attracting a lot of students from New Brunswick. The majority of our students come from New Brunswick and Atlantic Canada. And we know that we have to increase the number of students from the rest of Canada.
“You’re…dealing with students in Grade 12 and so you have to begin your September recruiting work with the same vigor and enthusiasm that you did a year before.”
