At Ontario Universities and Colleges were are currently dealing with through known as the double cohort. This double cohort has been caused by the elimination of the OAC (Grade 13) level in high schools so that in 2003 there are two classes of students graduating from high school (those in Grade 12 and those in OAC). This has caused a unique problem with Universities and Colleges since more students would be applying for spots at the school meaning there would be more students who are rejected. One way to decrease this rejection level is to increase the level of enrollment in the universities but this brings about other problems. The first being space. Are there enough residence spaces and classrooms for these students? This problem is the reason I’m righting this entry. You see the government and universities promised students that there would be enough space for them. With regards to living space I think the University of Waterloo did a fine job. The issues I have are with classroom space.
Every morning I come into school I pass by a classroom where the students are packed in like sardines. At least a half dozen have no place to sit and today I saw someone standing in the doorway trying to see what the teacher was doing. Now if I was any of these students I would be pissed off. The university claimed it had classroom space for these students and they were more than happy to claim this while they happily took their tuition money but the reality of the situation is that there isn’t enough space. If I was still a student I would demand more for my $2800 tuition fee (which covers 4 months of schooling). I’d demand that every student should be able to sit down and take notes of a test instead of standing in the doorway trying to take notes and pay attention to the teacher while standing. It kind of peeves me to see the university treating students like this. They knew they were going to have concerns like this but it seems they just ignored them.
I know the issues aren’t that black and white. I realize there are buildings popping up all over campus. Though I also realize that a large majority of the space in those buildings will go to professors and graduate students (which are much needed since they are determined to increase graduate student enrollment in the next couple of years as well). The problem is that there is only a limited amount of space that will go to the undergrads and I would imagine that the same problems will occur next year as well (with all the people who failed to get in last year trying again next year). I just wish that universities and colleges would start to think about the students a little more instead of thinking about the amount of money they are going to recieve from the students.