The University of Saskatchewan says Aboriginal students now make up 10% of its total student population — the highest its ever been.
Recently collected data reveals that 1,999 students voluntarily self-declared their Aboriginal ancestry this academic term.
University registrar Russell Isinger says they recently made it easier for Aboriginal students to self-declare their ancestry:
“We’ve changed many of our business processes to allow Aboriginal students to self-declare as Aboriginal more easily. So, we’ve always had the suspicion at the university that there are a lot more Aboriginal students here than we were actually recording, and we needed to provide means for them to self-declare to the institution that were more straightforward than what we were using.”
Isinger says university officials are confident they now have a more accurate picture of Aboriginal student enrolment.
The director of Aboriginal initiatives at the U of S, Candace Wasacase-Lafferty, says it’s evidence they are closing the gap between the percentage of Aboriginal students on campus and the percentage of the general population.
Statistics Canada has reported that Aboriginal people accounted for 15% of Saskatchewan’s population in 2011.
Isinger is hoping there comes a point where more than a quarter of the campus population is Aboriginal.