Ontario announced $32 million in funding for nearly 2,000 new openings for students in competitive programs.
The funding is part of a larger $1.7 billion project to create 70,000 more enrolment positions for students in the province.
The province announced an additional 40,000 seats earlier this month to its original 30,000 seat plan.
Humber’s healthcare programs will receive 1,187 seats, STEM programs gain 428 seats and 356 seats will be provided to trades programs.
Humber is receiving the fifth largest allocated seats in the province after McMaster, Brock, Ontario Tech and Waterloo.
The majority of seats are headed to McMaster University in Hamilton, 2,769, followed by Niagara’s Brock University, 2,565, then Oshawa’s Ontario Tech at 2,523 and Waterloo University at 2,515 seats.
Institutes across the provinces are adding all additional seats to STEM, healthcare, trades or other in-demand career programs, the province said.
Humber’s Director of Communications Andrew Leopold said the polytechnic is expecting to know which specific programs are gaining the additional seats by mid-October.
He said Humber will advise Queen’s Park on which programs will receive the spots and “the government will respond accordingly.
“We know the programs that we want to support and then the government will indicate what they want to support.”
He said the funding will go to supporting the growing programs.
“That would include staffing, equipment, other student resources, other costs to run the program,” he said.
Leopold said the government assigned the extra seats to each department after Humber submitted a proposal for the funding initiative.
He said Humber looked into labour demand before submitting the proposal which included health, STEM, trades and the unapproved education sector.
However, other post-secondary institutes did gain extra seats for their education sectors.
“Anytime we can have an additional student or more than one student is a positive thing for Humber,” he said. “These additional seats are good for Humber to have.”
“As part of our plan to build a stronger, more competitive and more self-reliant Ontario economy, we’re investing record amounts to train students for good-paying careers in high-demand fields,” Premier Doug Ford said.
A 2026 Council of Ontario Universities report says Ontario will need more than one million educated workers within the next decade.
The report predicts more than 350,000 healthcare and STEM jobs will open between 2026 and 2035 in Ontario.
The same report says these seats for programs in healthcare and STEM are justified to reflect the demands of the economy.
Without expanding classroom capacities for the labour market, shortages will continue, the report says.
The Ministry of Colleges, Universities, Research Excellence and Security did not respond to requests for comment.
