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Study: Postsecondary enrolment trends to 2031
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This report projects the potential future population of students in colleges and universities in Canada and the provinces during the next quarter century. It does this by applying various assumptions regarding participation rates in postsecondary education to projected demographic trends.
The report creates three scenarios for projecting enrolment levels in universities and colleges to 2031 under certain conditions.
The first—the "status-quo" scenario—is based on the assumption that future participation rates would match those observed in the recent three-year period between 2003/2004 and 2005/2006.
The second scenario is based on participation rates observed over a much longer term. It assumes that rates would continue to grow until 2016/2017 on the basis of historical trends in the period between 1990/1991 and 2005/2006, then remain at the 2016/2017 levels up to 2030/2031.
A third scenario assumes that participation rates for male students would rise to match rates for women that existed between 2003/2004 and 2005/2006. (Participation rates are consistently higher at the university level for women, especially those aged 17 to 24.)
Demographic projections show that over the coming decades, large shifts will occur in the size of age cohorts that have historically constituted the majority of students in Canadian colleges and universities.
Due to the baby-bust during the 1970s, there was a relatively large decline in Canada's population aged 17 to 29 between 1991 and 1998. However, numbers started to increase for this age group around 2003 as a result of the Echo Boom cohort, the children of the Baby Boomers.
This effect is projected to peak around 2012 or 2013, after which projections again show a decline in the size of this population.
Under the "status quo" scenario, total full-time postsecondary enrolment is projected to grow steadily until 2012/2013 to nearly 1.3 million students, about 50,000 more than between 2003/2004 and 2005/2006.
After 2012/2013, a major decline in the size of the youth cohorts would begin to affect enrolments. Full-time postsecondary enrolment would reach a trough in 2025/2026, with a student population 9% below the peak 13 years earlier.
Under this scenario, the national pattern would mask considerable differences in the magnitude and timing of enrolment peaks and troughs across the provinces.
For example, in the Atlantic provinces and Saskatchewan, projected enrolments start to drop early in the projection period. In Quebec, the number of new entrants into the postsecondary system would increase significantly early in the period, with total enrolments peaking in 2009/2010.
In scenario 2, which assumes that participation rates will grow in line with historical trends, postsecondary enrolment for the age group 17 to 29 would first rise, due in part to increases in the size of this population early in the projection period and in part to the assumed increases in participation rates. Rising participation rates would then compensate for declines in the size of the age cohort to 2016/2017.
However, by 2030/2031, enrolment levels would plunge by more than 90,000, reflecting the decline in the population aged 17 to 29 over the latter part of the projection period.
Scenario 3 looks at what would occur if the gap in participation rates between men and women were to close. If the university participation rate among men were to rise to match that of women, male university enrolment would increase dramatically to 2030/2031.
In other words, raising the university participation rates of men could offset some of the potential enrolment deficits that would result from a decline in the size of the university-age cohort after 2012/2013.
Definitions, data sources and methods: survey numbers, including related surveys, 3602 and 3701.
The report, "Postsecondary Enrolment Trends to 2031: Three Scenarios" (81-595-MIE2007058, free), is part of the Culture, Tourism and the Centre for Education Statistics - Research Papers series, now available from the Publications module of our website.
For more information, or to enquire about the concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact Client Services (toll-free 1-800-307-3382; 613-951-7608; fax: 613-951-9040; educationstats@statcan.gc.ca), Culture, Tourism and the Centre for Education Statistics.
