Vernon Matters file photo

By Liam Verster

18% increase

Enrolment up at OC Vernon by nearly 150 students

Oct 27, 2023 | 5:00 AM

The number of students enrolled at Okanagan College’s Vernon campus has grown on an annual basis.

“Thrilled to be able to say that our numbers are going up in Vernon, so we’re just shy of 1,000 (959) registered students in this academic year, up from just over 810 (810) last year,” Dr. Neil Fassina, President of Okanagan College (OC), told Vernon council at the city’s Committee of the Whole meeting Monday, Oct. 23.

Along with indicating a roughly 18 per cent increase in registered students this year, Fassina’s presentation also noted that applications for the Vernon campus programs were up by 10 per cent on an annual basis.

Fassina said the Vernon campus has 224 registered international students this school year, which he said was up from previous years though he did not provide comparable figures.

The president’s report indicated there were a total of 10,374 registered full-time and 6,595 continuing studies students enrolled in courses provided through OC in 20 communities from Osoyoos to Revelstoke.

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“So you start to see the proportionality of where Vernon fits in to the overall student body of our institution.”

Fassina indicated having more students enrolled in local post-secondary programs is important as the province’s labour market outlook forecasted that there would be roughly a million jobs opening in B.C. by 2032.

“For the Thompson-Okanagan region, that translates into 120,000 job openings over the next nine years or so,” Fassina said.

“I’m thrilled to be able to say, as the college president, that almost 55 per cent of those jobs are going to need a college education.”

In his presentation to city council, Fassina gave a brief update on the construction of the new student housing and child care facility at the Vernon campus.

“We’re just at the final framing stages, from there we move on to envelopes, into drywall, then into finishing,” Fassina said.

The college plans on having the new building complete and ready to house students and offer child care services by the fall 2024 semester. Progress on building the new housing and child care facility can be followed via the college’s “construction camera” live stream.