After approving an extra 1,000 graduate students for this academic year, U of T’s Governing Council is on its way to adding around 1,300 more for next year.

This increase is driven by Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty’s plan to increase the province’s graduate student population by 14,000. The deal is attractive to the university because the province has assured funding to the tune of $40 million for the 2,300 additional graduate students in next year’s budget, and promises another $100 million to spend on new buildings over coming years.

At the same time, the number of undergraduates on St. George campus is being reduced over the next few years. This year’s intake of Arts and Science frosh, for instance, was about eight per cent lower than last year.

In the long term-2010 and beyond-U of T foresees having almost 15,000 graduate students, up from 10,780 two years ago.

Some governors, however, worried that department deans might plan enrollment increases simply to increase their department’s budgets. One opined that some academic units might be more averse to expansion than others.

“No good unit wants to get worse,” the governor said. “And premature or excessive growth will just make a unit worse.”

The graduate expansion policy document the planning and budget committee discussed also noted another trend. While the number of professional masters students (MBA, etc) has increased by 76 per cent between 1997 and 2005, enrollment in PhD and PhD-bound masters programs-which ostensibly represent the more traditional kind of scholarship and have lower tuition fees to boot-grew by only 25 per cent and 0.6 per cent respectively.

Student commons planning committee formed

By early next year, we will know how much a new student centre for the St. George campus might cost.

A planning committee formed this week will consider how to assign student space, “as well as office and other space required for one or more anchor tenants,” according to its task-list. Anchor tenants raised a few governors’ eyebrows at Tuesday’s planning and budget committee meeting, who said the term brings a mall to mind.

Provost Vivek Goel replied that these tenants could include food outlets. “There may also be some retail,” he added.

The planning committee will report back by January.