Enrolment for 16 University of Guelph programs paused; 360 students affected
CBC
Hundreds of incoming first-year and masters students at the University of Guelph are now faced with re-evaluating their fall plans as the university has announced it has paused enrolment in 16 undergraduate and graduate programs.
About 360 students received offers to the affected programs. The university said the programs that have been paused had low or declining enrolment; many are in the sciences.
Students who either received or accepted an offer of admission in the affected programs for the 2023-2024 academic year will be offered a spot in a comparable program. The university said it was still working on a solution for graduate students.
Any students currently enrolled in the 16 affected programs at the University of Guelph will be able to complete their degrees, said the university.
One of the hardest-hit departments is physics; four of the five undergraduate programs it offers are now in limbo.
The department had 283 first-year applicants to those programs this fall, said Joanne O'Meara, a physics professor and former associate chair for the department's undergraduate matters.
"With the pause to four of those five programs that has affected 61 per cent of the applicants to our [physics] programs," said O'Meara.
She says she hasn't noticed a significant decline in enrolment over her 21 years at the university. The program has never had large numbers, she says, but pausing enrolment undermines work that's been done to recruit women into STEM fields.
"Two of the programs that have been put on hold, the biological and medical physics program and the chemical physics program are more attractive in terms of the numbers for women," O'Meare told CBC News. "We have 79 per cent women in our biological and medical physics program which was just put on hold. And the physics program that is being maintained currently has 16 per cent women."
The University of Guelph says the move comes after a review in March and April of its undergraduate and graduate programs.
The point of that review, it said, was to "ensure that our resources and efforts are focused on in-demand, innovative and strategically important programs," said a message from the office of the provost and vice president academic, to students on April 14.
"Over the last 10 years, for example, the University of Guelph has added a number of new programs in emerging areas but we have not been as diligent, I guess, in continuing that consistent review of what we're already doing," Gwen Chapman, provost and vice president academic for the University of Guelph, told CBC News.
"As we start doing new things we need to stop doing some of the things that we're doing because we can't just keep doing more all of the time."
She said the review used two sets of criteria: programs with declining applications over the last five years or low enrolment — fewer than 40 undergrad students enrolled per year or fewer than 10 masters students.
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