Population and Housing

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Given that elementary school populations are not rising dramatically, it stands to reason that the domestic university student population would eventually stop rising as well.  The universities claim that they already have enough residence stock for their needs.

WLU blamed part of their enrollment decline on the decline of applications to their arts programs.  The Ontario Society of Professional Engineers is reporting rising underemployment among engineers in Ontario so Waterloo could end up with the same situation soon enough.

At what point will Waterloo be overbuilt?  Can higher density buildings designed for the student lifestyle (eg 5 bedrooms to a unit; residence style amenities etc) be repurposed fast enough to attract other demographics? 

Elementary schools are actually VERY full.  It's high schools that have seen a dip in enrollment at the moment.

They may be full, but the elementary population in the Region is dropping for now.  It's always been a challenge for school boards to manage their building resources as populations wax and wane in different neighbourhoods.  I know that when the school in my neighbourhood opened, it was designed for 400 children, peaked at 750, was predicted to drop below 300 and is now somewhere in the 500 student range.  

Between this current school year and next year, the Waterloo Catholic and Public Boards anticipate having ~1300 fewer students according to this Record article.  The same article notes that Catholic enrollment will continue to decline through 2018 while the Public Board anticipates a stabilization by 2017.

Provincially, the total school age population across all Boards in Ontario in 1994-95 (the oldest stats that I could find quickly, and the middle of the Baby Boom Echo) was 2,069,989.  The 2013-14 preliminary estimate of the school age population is 2,015,423, or about a 3% drop in the population.  To get an idea of where the school population might be heading in 10-15 years, there were 148,424 Grade 11 students in the 2013-14 school year compared with 125,717 kindergarten age students in the same period.  I excluded JK and Grade 12 numbers since I expect that there is under-enrollment in JK and over-enrollment in Grade 12 due to student victory laps.