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Student Recruitment and Retention

Through its initiatives in the area of student recruitment and retention, ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ’s School of Continuing Studies (SCS) aims to respond to the TRC’s call to develop strategies to reduce education and employment gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations (2015b). Today, one in three Indigenous learners at ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ is enrolled at SCS. In 2019, over 114 Indigenous learners enrolled in an SCS program, and more than 150 registered in an independent course. We are committed to increasing the number of Indigenous learners at SCS and to ensuring their academic success.

Indigenous Peoples are the fastest-growing population in Canada. Nearly 1.7 million people identified as Indigenous in the 2016 census. It is estimated that the population of Indigenous Peoples will grow to more than 2.5 million, or 6.5% of the overall population, by 2036. Indigenous Millennials (born between 1980 and 1997) and members of Generation Z (born after 1997) together account for a significant percentage of the Indigenous population. This shift has implications for higher education, and we can expect to see a significant increase in the number of Indigenous learners enrolled at SCS in the coming decade.

We focus on our recruitment and retention efforts, including developing support services and financial support that will help students to attend and graduate from their programs.

Although an increasing number of young Indigenous learners have some form of post-secondary education, Indigenous Peoples in Canada are proportionately less likely to be university graduates than are non-Indigenous people. There is also a wide employment gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.

Indigenous Peoples are more likely to have lower wages due to the vast gap in education. In 2016, the median total income of the Indigenous population aged 25 to 54 was just over $33,500 compared to over $48,000 for the non-Aboriginal population (Statistics Canada, 2016).

Indigenous learners also often face significant financial barriers in paying for their education. Although some Indigenous learners are eligible for funding allocated by the federal government, these funds are limited and are distributed at the community level to an ever-increasing number of candidates. In some cases, this funding is distributed preferentially to younger students attending full-time studies rather than mature students. Indigenous learners may also have difficulty saving sufficient funds for education due to limited employment opportunities in their communities and higher cost of living in the North. In this area, we focus on our recruitment and retention efforts, including developing support services and financial support that will help students to attend and graduate from their programs.