International students to make a comeback in Waterloo Region for the school year

A COVID-19 readiness plan must be submitted to the local public health unit for each post-secondary institution that wishes to be added to the list, detailing how the school will effectively protect the health and safety of its students and surrounding communities.

Both were added to the official academic institution list of the federal government by Conestoga College, University of Waterloo, and Wilfrid Laurier University. The first post-secondary school on the list was Laurier.

Chris Buuck is Conestoga College’s Senior Vice President of Academic Management and International Education and tells the Mike Farwell Show on 570 NEWS that the school is not anticipating a significant influx of students to return for the winter semester.

“I think it’s really realistic to expect that we will have several hundred students arrive,” Buuck said, “but you can imagine there are a lot of variables in play, and so we have to have contingency plans in place.”

Once students enter, for a 14-day duration, frequent check-ins, and routine COVID-19 checking, they will have to quarantine.

We are interested with the regular check-ins from our point of view, as well as what we do to help students during their quarantine period. There is also a research aspect.

In the course of being named a DLI, Buuck adds that this was a mandatory step. Conestoga College might have up to 10,000 foreign students on campus before the pandemic, but now foresee just a few hundred. She said the enrollment of the winter semester this year has declined significantly.

“Regular intake would have been around 5,000 level one students, I think it’s realistic to say that we’re going to be less than half of that for January.”

The winter semester at Conestoga College begins on January 18th.