THE McGILL STUDENT BODY: PAST AND FUTURE ENROLMENT

Résumé

In this survey of the statistics of student registrations at McGill from its earliest days, Frost and Rosenberg trace fluctuations in the constituent elements of the student body while wars, depressions, and social and political changes succeeded each other. The student body clearly has changed character along with its constitution in slow response to these events, and has done so in ways not always accountable. In terms of total numbers, however, the future of enrolment in certain faculties is reasonably predictable, given the latest contingency of absolute shrinkage in the supply of people at the appropriate ages. Beyond that, the number of questions that can be asked about the future remains far greater than the number of answers available from the past.