Student enrolment and recruitment at Lethbridge College has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to registrar Marko Hilgersom, student enrolment has increased this year.

“If we’re at 5,400, 5,500, we’re probably at 5,100 last year at this time.”

Hilgersom hopes that in the winter semester the college will get more students. He also hopes that there will be more student activities on campus during the winter semester. 

There is fewer international students enrolled at Lethbridge College this year than there has been in the past. Dr. Samantha Lenci, Provost and Vice President Academic at Lethbridge College can attest to this. 

“Several students were already in the country, our second-year students, so we didn’t lose on the retention factor of our international students, but we did lose about 200 students.”

International students who applied for this upcoming year may have not been allowed to come into the country because of COVID-19 travel restrictions. 

According to Lenci, some international students have deferred their application to the winter semester. She believes that some students will defer their application to next September. 

Recruitment at the college has also changed because of COVID-19. This year the college hosted their open house via zoom. Normally it is held in-person at the college. 

Lenci misses the opportunity to connect with students face-to-face.

“We have to do things remotely, whereas it was really nice to walk into a high school in Calgary, or Saskatchewan or BC and say hey, this is Lethbridge College, but we can’t do that right now.”

The college is focused on recruiting students in a safe way.

Since the pandemic started, students have been on campus a lot less. According to Hilgersom, the number of students on campus varies from day to day.

“So, any given day, I would say, 300 or 400 students are on campus, but there might be days where we’re a little bit more and there might be days that we’re less.”

Students who can be seen on campus are students in the trades, nursing, culinary arts, massage therapy and environmental science programs.

Since students are on campus less this year, the college has experienced a drop in revenue. The college normally gets revenue from residence, parking passes, the cafeteria and Tim Hortons.

The residences for Lethbridge College students are at about 50 per cent capacity, so that generates less revenue than normal. Parking passes are also not being purchased this year at the typical volume because most classes are taught online. 

The cafeteria has less people eating food made by culinary students and the Tim Hortons in the college is not operating this semester. All of these factors result in a loss of revenue for the college. 

In this year’s student representatives’ election there were a high number of about 650 voters. In past years, about 450 people vote and this year students voted for the election through an online poll.

The Lethbridge College Students’ Association is hosting events virtually this year. In September, it hosted an event called Sexy Bingo. 

It had about 50 people attend online. When the event is held in-person, about 250 people attend. 

According to Tanner Marcer, the Events and Communications Manager of the LCSA, it is not hosting as many events this year.

“We’ve definitely toned down the number of events we’re going to host, just to not overwhelm students with so many virtual activities.”

The LCSA continues to host events that students can attend in their spare time.