Let’s tell the joke once more because it might not be funny much longer: What do you get when you drive through the Lakehead campus?

The answer is supposed to be: “An undergraduate degree.”

But after Lakehead University’s recent success in recruiting top-notch high school students, we might not be so quick to laugh. In fact, Ryerson could take a lesson from the so-called “joke” universities as we look to welcome new students.

This year, Lakehead saw a 50 per cent jump in applicants with a 95 per cent high school average or higher. That came after the school offered free tuition this year, and every year they maintain an 85 per cent average, to high school students.

Even Nipissing, the dinkiest of Ontario universities, started offering full scholarships to students with high school averages of 90 per cent and higher in 2004 and saw its enrolment of top-notch students jump 64 per cent since then.

Trent University also jumped on the bandwagon, recently offering full tuition to those with a 90 per cent average, and is now receiving tons of calls.

Here at Ryerson, we’re close but not quite there. We offer $4,000 scholarships to students with an average of 95 and higher. These guaranteed entrance scholarships have recently become renewable for all programs, given students’ cummulative GPA is kept up.

Granted, we are a larger university than Lakehead or Nipissing and may not need to dangle as much green to convince GTA students to enrol.

But we can still look at this from our downtown context: our neighbour, and often perceived superior, the University of Toronto, is relatively stingy with its entrance scholarships.   

You might say the high school graduate would choose a distinguished U of T program and take little or no scholarship over Ryerson even if it was offering more money.

But I say things are changing. A growing business school, developing connectivity to the downtown community and a recession-driven interest in “hands-on” academia has given Ryerson more appeal. 

To do that, we need to re-focus our resources and campaigns. So far, Ryerson has spent more than half a million on the RU re-branding campaign to build a new reputation.

We need to spend resources elsewhere. Ryerson needs to up its ante on incentives for coming here. After all, nothing says ‘Welcome to Ryerson’ like cash in students’ pockets.

We really could learn something from Lakehead — even if it is a joke.