Nearly 1,000 students have withdrawn from classes at St. Clair College this semester.
The last day to withdraw and be eligible for a tuition refund was Tuesday December 5, but the college did not expect to have official figures until Wednesday morning. At last count 875 students had dropped out of the fall semester.
"We've been seeing about a hundred come in every day coming in so at this point we are expected to report about 1,000 students at the end of the day have withdrawn," says Mike Silvaggi, associate vice president of student services and registrar.
He says with the average tuition per semester costing around $1,500, plus all of the ancillary costs that are also being refunded, the withdrawals will result in a loss of around $2-million for the college.
"There's been no indication that this dollar amount will be given back to the colleges through ministry funding or anything of that sort. As of this point we are treating this as reportable data only and we're making allowances through our operating budgets and so forth," says Silvaggi.
Students can still apply for the student support fund until the end of April. Applications to the fund will be reviewed starting December 11, 2017.