Engineering enrolment increased after tuition increased

Morgan Modjeski, staff

Despite the rise in tuition last spring, the faculty of engineering saw a boom in enrolment this year.

Douglas Ruth, dean of engineering, said despite the university’s “doom and gloom” predictions, the general enrolment in the faculty of engineering had increased by 13 per cent.

Enrolment in civil engineering increased by 25 per cent, biological engineering by five per cent, electrical engineering by five per cent, and mechanical engineering by 15 per cent. Direct-entry enrolment, of students straight from high school, increased by 10 per cent. In March 2007, students in the faculty of engineering voted to increase tuition by 38 per cent. Students voted 64 per cent in favour of the increase, but two student groups formed to campaign against increasing tuition — one backed by UMSU — eventually appealing the decision on the grounds that only 58 per cent of students voted in the referendum.

Out of the 27,280 students enrolled at the U of M presently, the 1,241 engineering students make up 4.5 per cent of the entire student population.

Of these, 232 are undeclared, or first-year students.

The increase in tuition contributed $1 million to the faculty this year.

Philip Dompierre, senior stick of the society of engineering, explained that $250,000 of that money was directed towards funding students who were unable to join the engineering faculty because of the increase. The remaining $750,000 went towards improving the faculty in the form of teaching assistance, lab resources, and professors. A Statistics Canada study conducted in 2001 has shown that a person with a PhD in engineering will make nearly twice as much as the average Canadian worker.

According to that same study, in 2001 there was a four to one ratio of men to women in the field of engineering, with 80 per cent of current engineering doctorate holders being male. In the U of M’s faculty of engineering, there are currently 71 males for every 11 females enrolled.