Now that open registration has started at Thompson Rivers University for the fall and winter semesters, the school is looking to see what impact the pandemic will have.

Matt Milovick, the vice president of administration and finance at TRU, says about 40 per cent of students last year came from out of country.

And the differential on fees is roughly a factor of three, so international students pay about three times more than domestic students. And that’s because obviously there is no provincial grant that goes with international students,” Milovick says.

“We are hoping that a number of them will be able to find their way here. Perhaps they are already in the country in some other way. Or perhaps they may start their learning online in their home countries. So we’re being as optimistic as we can. We’re trying to provide all of our students, international and domestic, with as much information as we can at this time.”

Milovick says he expects it will probably take until mid-September before the university has any certainty on enrollment and revenues for the rest of the fiscal year.