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Thanks to Rick for the enrolment stats. We are beginning to see the decline in university enrolment that is inevitable as the baby boom "bump" moves through the population. The bump was born between 1957 and 1966 (those of us born between 1946 and 1956 as the birth rate rose steadily, form the leading edge of the rise but the peak year for births in Canada was 1961 and after 1966 there was a steep decline). In 1971 the bump kids were 5-14. In 1981 they were 15-24. In 1991 the bump was 25-34 years old and beginning to be finished with university. The expected decline is coming a bit slower and later because students have stayed in school longer or gone back to school in record numbers (probably due to the recession of the late eighties, early ninties). This year the bump is 33-42 years old. They're struggling to build careers, getting past the point where you go back, except maybe some to graduate school. Maybe that's why it's so hard to get into graduate school these days. Undergraduates (the basic income units of university funding) are typically 19 to 25 years of age. In 1998 these would have been born in 1973 to 1979, years when the birth rate was flat. Universities can do all sorts of things to attract students but the students are just not there. The only way to expand enrolment is to make it cheaper and easier to go to university and in that way attract a larger share of the population. But in fact it's getting more expensive to attend and people in general are beginning to lose their faith in the efficacy of university education to ensure social mobility. I wonder how many of the new universities that came into being in the late sixties and early seventies in response to the leading edge of the boom, will survive the coming slump. If universities do attract a larger proportion of 19 to 25 year olds maybe there will be an increased need or at least an increased PERCEIVED need for composition and rhetoric classes for the poor plebes.