STEPHEN RICCIO
GATINEAU Sept. 16, 2020
CEGEP Heritage College in Gatineau has seen a slight increase in registration for the fall semester despite COVID-19, with the number of students attending from the Pontiac also holding steady.
Academic Dean Roya Abouzia told THE EQUITY that while they await official number validation on Sept. 18, there are . . .
1,328 students as of last week compared to the 1,245 that were still attending class this time last year.
Many students applied for programs in March, and therefore a large chunk of applicants were not aware of COVID-19’s impact when doing so, but Abouzia said that the volume of applicants in June was very strong.
Given the slight increase, she said it is difficult to project the impact of COVID-19 onto students’ decisions to enrol or not enrol.
To accommodate the presence of the virus, Abouzia said that many programs have moved fully online while others are largely online along while still needing occasional in-person labs, workshops, placement, etc.
In terms of student numbers from the Pontiac region, she said the 70 students enrolled matches up with previous yearly totals.
This post-secondary snapshot is in contrast with the below average number of applications that Pontiac Scholarship Fund’s France Morisette-Lamarche observed.
“There was less applicants than in the previous years, for sure,” Morisette-Lamarche said. “I would say we had 33 per cent less than usual.”
She added that all 24 of the available bursaries were given out despite the decrease.
