Otago Polytechnic is anticipating its best enrolment figures for seven or eight years.
Numbers were well up in most departments, and waiting lists existed for seven courses, chief executive Phil Ker said yesterday.
Tertiary institutions are funded by the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC).
Under a new regime introduced last year, institutions and the must agree an upper limit on equivalent full-time students (efts).
Mr Ker said enrolments were tracking at least 4% up on budget, which might take the polytechnic 127 efts above its TEC-funded limit of 3183.
"I expect that we will exceed our funded cap this year and have already signalled that to TEC. They will either allow us to exceed our funded cap or, if not, we would have to restrict our semester two intake. I am aware that officials are already looking into the situation [across] the sector in order to advise government."
There were no courses where enrolments were significantly under expectations, Mr Ker said.
However, there were still spaces in most courses, particularly in cookery, horticulture and viticulture courses offered at the Cromwell campus.
This year's position is an improvement on last year's, when a lack of enrolments led to redundancies or cuts in staff hours in four departments.
All in all, Otago was "looking forward to our best year for seven or eight years", Mr Ker said.
Development manager Mike Waddell said yesterday students appeared to be seeking careers which would remain impervious to economic recession.
Enrolments were up in civil engineering, construction management, architectural draughting, computing and information technology, and cookery, all of which appeared on the skills shortage list published last year by the Department of Labour.
As expected, enrolments were also increasing as the unemployment rate went up, he said.
