Vantage College is suspending admissions to its management stream for the 2019/20 academic year due to low enrolment and retention rates. This does not impact current students.
Vantage One is a first-year program for international students who do not meet other UBC programs’ English-language requirement, which offers multiple streams including the management program. Low enrolment rates have troubled the stream since its creation.
“Our enrolment has ranged from … 20-something to a high of 30-something,” said Vantage College Principal Dr. Joanne Fox, noting that the ideal cohort size is around 60 to 75 students.
In response, Vantage has been trying to emphasize the student voices in their recruiting materials by highlighting student stories, their portfolios and opportunities for students in recruitment messages.
Low retention rate is also another problem to tackle.
While Vantage Management is based in UBC Okanagan (UBCO), students attend their first two semesters at UBC Vancouver, then transfer to the Okanagan campus. In their second year, they can progress into UBCO’s Bachelor of Management degree program, but few students have done so.
“Enrolment in the Vantage One Management program is low and retention of Vantage One Management students into the Bachelor of Management program at the UBC Okanagan campus has also been low,” reads a memo submitted to the Senate.
“What we saw is a trend of many students transferring to the faculty of arts,” said Fox. According to her, the arts stream is the most popular choice at Vantage, with over 200 students.
Unlike management, Vantage arts students complete their entire first year in Vancouver and can continue to the faculty of arts at the same campus. Vantage management is the only program stream which doesn’t lead to a UBC Vancouver (UBCV) program, which Fox said may confuse students.
“The challenge … is having prospective students understand that … the rest of your degree program takes place at UBC Okanagan,” she said, adding that Vantage has since introduced trips to UBCO to clarify the program structure for students.
Jessie Zhang, a Vantage engineering student in 2016, had several friends in the Management stream who opted to pursue a bachelor of arts at UBCV instead of a management degree at UBCO.
“I think the main reason for that is [management] students have to complete their program in the Okanagan campus for the rest of their three years,” Zhang wrote in a message to The Ubyssey.
“They just simply don’t like that campus or they thought it was unfair for them to get stuck [there].”
Zhang added that some students applied to management only to transfer to other streams later because they feel it is less competitive to get admitted to the management stream.
UBCV Senate, which approved the admission suspension at its October 17 meeting, will revisit the issue in summer 2019.
Until then, Vantage College and UBCO will work together to determine the “right model” for the management stream. According to Fox, UBCO has already launched a task force to look into the stream’s future, starting with an “environmental scan.”
“We’re pausing and working with our Okanagan-based partners to really look at … what is the right model?” said Fox.