Research project recommendation to the city council of Niagara Falls
The Problem
The study conducted by the consultant hired by the city council of Niagara Falls did not investigate the level of demand for a downtown Niagara Falls campus. It is very important to know the level of demand as it will play a crucial role in the success of campus. If only the campus is able to attract good number of students it will be able to achieve its desired profits and growth. So assessing the potential demand for downtown campus in Niagara Falls is the main problem.
Current Data
There are two important data with city council currently. One that attracting a university to establish a campus would have a very positive economic impact on Niagara Fall region and second that business programs are the number one attraction for high-school graduates today. This data is not sufficient as it doesn’t provide us information about the volume of demand and how many students can expect once it is ready to function. So we need to develop a research plan which can help us in forecasting or give us an estimate for the potential demand of downtown campus.
Research Plan
The following research plan will help the city council to evaluate whether it is feasible or not make a downtown campus.
Gathering relevant data is the first step towards understanding the problem.
Relevant information that can help us:
1) Information on similar downtown campuses in different cities of Ontario. For example information on downtown campuses of Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton, Guelph, Waterloo, Kingston, London etc. Information that can be useful for us :
a) Program with high demand and that receive the highest number of applications.
b) Program with high demand, but are taught in least campuses
c) How have the campuses in various cities impacted the economic health of the city?
The above information will give us a direction towards the selection of course.
2) How many students of Niagara go to different cities every year for education, if given a choice will they prefer to stay in Niagara and do their education?
This information will give us an idea about how many students can campus expect from Niagara region itself.
3) How well is Niagara region considered for job opportunities after education? This factor often plays a major role in success of campus. If students across Canada think Niagara has good job opportunities they will prefer to relocate for their education to Niagara.
4) How reasonable is Niagara region for student life, many a times student prefer to select their campus based on the affordability of the city as they have to spend between 3 to 5 years. The more reasonable the city, better it is for the students.
5) General information on what students look for in a campus before joining. This may help us in getting some extra information which could be useful in assessing the potential demand.
So above information will be useful for evaluating the potential demand for campus in Niagara region.
