McMaster Enrolment Size Revisited

Published: August 08, 2007

The continuing neighbourhood problems with traffic, parking, rental housing, and alcohol consumption can all be connected to the uncontrolled increases in undergraduate enrolment at the Westdale campus of McMaster University.

The AWWCA highlighted the need for McMaster to develop a “carrying capacity” for the campus in a Jan. 29, 2007, letter to the editor of The Hamilton Spectator.

As excessive enrolment continues to act as a root cause of many of our quality-of-life issues, I thought it appropriate to review our progress thus far and to clarify our concerns for the future.

Background

In 2003 McMaster set out to develop a vision for the university called “Refining Directions.” The AWWCA sent a formal letter to the McMaster administration on May 23, 2003, to provide community input into this process. We reprinted this letter on page 6 of the autumn 2003 issue of Neighbourhood News & Views.

Part of Refining Directions was to develop a planning process based on enrolment size. This document, “Refining Directions: Long Range Planning, What does it Mean,” can be found at www.mcmaster.ca/univsec/reports/S_REP_031126_RDLongRangePlng.pdf.

McMaster engaged the community by hosting a Refining Directions community meeting June 1, 2004, at St. Mary's High School. McMaster's presentation can be seen at www.mcmaster.ca/pres/refining/community_townhall.pdf.

This meeting was well attended, and the community clearly expressed its concerns with the continued growth of the undergraduate population at the university and its effect on the community in such areas as excessive alcohol consumption, traffic/trucking volumes, and the increasing number of single-family homes used to house the growing transient population.

There has been no followup with this planning process, although the university administration committed to hold undergraduate enrolment at the 2007 level until at least 2010. Please review the comments made by McMaster President Dr. Peter George in the spring issue of Neighbourhood News & Views. Recently, McMaster has accepted a 10 per cent increase in the first-year undergraduate enrolment for the 2007/2008 year, well above the promised steady-state enrolment level, and above the average 7 per cent increase for Ontario universities.

Our Concerns for the Future

The inability or unwillingness of the McMaster administration to limit undergraduate enrolment creates many problems for the surrounding community.

At the current rate, McMaster is well above the projections for even Refining Directions' “think big” option, which projected a total enrolment of 26,400 undergraduate students by 2015, a 40 per cent increase over the 2006 levels.

The AWWCA will continue to advocate for a defined carrying capacity for the Westdale campus. We believe that the 2006 enrolment, or something smaller, would be an appropriate level. Without such a cap, it is impossible for the community to properly plan for the future.

We will also pursue any opportunities to share our concerns with the student body and the faculty, as uncontrolled undergraduate enrolment also has negative consequences for class sizes and student/faculty ratios.

Author: Rob Payne