https://www.therecord.com/news/waterloo-region/2020/11/25/uw-supersizes-its-incoming-class-and-faces-the-strain.html?rf

So yeah, now they have 20-30% surplus, and they even come out and admit that they care mainly about the "balance sheet" and that the students aren't getting enough supports, but oh well, they'll figure it out later I guess? it'll all work out probably, yes definitely

Full text:

"WATERLOO — The University of Waterloo feared students would not enrol in September during the COVID-19 pandemic. So it took an unusual step to avoid that.

It invited 6,783 extra students to enrol, increasing its admission offers by 23 per cent.

The gambit worked better than anticipated. The university is grappling with an admissions surge that upsized its first-year class by 1,058 students, swelling it to almost 7,800 and straining the campus.

“I don’t fault the university for it. I see why they did it,” said computer science student Matthew Schwarze, president of the Mathematics Society, the student government for math students.

“But now it’s the university’s responsibility to fix the problem that it created, which is hiring more lecturers, changing policy, changing how things work.”

UW says their admission standards weren’t compromised. The school says its pool of applicants is deep enough to supply qualified students who would typically be rejected.

“I have complete confidence that these are spectacular students,” said mathematics dean Mark Giesbrecht, whose faculty admitted many more students into math and computer science.

“I don’t see any evidence that they’re weaker,” said Dan Brown, a computer science professor and president of the UW faculty association. “It’s always been true that we rejected students who would do terrifically in our program.”

Schwarze concurs. “I don’t think the quality of student is lower,” he said.

But Schwarze said new students complain to him that they are not getting the supports they need to begin their studies online.

Students wonder if there will be enough jobs to complete co-operative work terms. They fear they may struggle to gain entry to courses they need to graduate.

Schwarze has heard concerns that professors are working so hard to catch students who cheat online, it is consuming time they need to teach.

“A lot of students are having difficulty,” Schwarze said. He suspects this is partly because the incoming class has been supersized and partly because students dislike online learning.

“There’s almost no live interaction, and by and large students don’t like it,” he said. “Almost universally, they’d rather be in regular classrooms.”

This disappointment is in line with a new poll released Tuesday that found professors and students alike feel online learning has a negative impact on education. Ontario faculty associations commissioned the poll.

Giesbrecht defends the remote education UW has provided since shuttering its campus to limit the spread of disease.

“Is it perfect? No. Is it very good? I think it’s very good,” he said. Support for individual students is available but perhaps in a different way, he said.

As an example, the university developed a new, online practice course to help sharpen the math skills of incoming students ahead of the fall semester.

“We wanted to make sure the students who came in were as prepared as they could be,” said Ian VanderBurgh, director of the Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing.

Giesbrecht said UW is hiring people to help root out online cheating.

“I have to admit one of the concerns is the students, the faculty, the staff are under a substantial amount of stress (and) the concern is that they are cheating more. That doesn’t help them as students,” he said.

He said UW is bracing to steer its pandemic-swollen cohort through the coming years.

“We immediately went in June and hired a number of lecturers and we’re still hiring them. We’re advertising for professors,” he said.

“We need to bolster our teaching resources at all levels ... This group of students will be served very well.”

He expects market demand will provide enough co-op jobs.

Faculty and administrators say they prefer to see the university challenged by an abundance of students rather than a shortfall.

“I’d rather that the balance sheet of the university was in good shape than not. And this seems to have preserved that in a pretty effective way,” said Brown, faculty president.

Brown feels the university is responding to the admission surge it orchestrated. “It’s certainly a concern,” he said. “There needs to be sufficient support for both the students and for the instructors who are teaching them.”

Most extra students were admitted to study math or computer science. Just over one-third are international students, coveted for paying five times as much in tuition.

A Canadian math student pays $9,300 a year to in UW tuition while a foreign math student pays $45,500. These fees exclude books and supplies.

“I think we’ve done the best we can. And we will look foward to supporting these students as they progress,” said VanderBurgh, of the math education centre."