Mactech accounts for 25% of Nova Scotia's private college student loan writeoffs

The Cape Breton career college Mactech Distance Education was identified Tuesday as the source of one-quarter of all private college student loans written off by the Nova Scotia government last year.

• Mactech Distance Education to close for 'business' reasons
• Mactech Distance Education under scrutiny for student loan defaults

Mactech sticks out because it was just one of about 46 private career colleges operating in Nova Scotia.

"The writeoffs for student loans from private career colleges are pretty evenly spread amongst the colleges in the province," said Andrew Preeper, spokesman for the province's Labour and Advanced Education department.

"The one exception is Mactech, which was $265,000 or 25 per cent of the private career college student loan writeoffs."

In 2015-16 the department wrote off about $1.1 million in student loans from private colleges. 

Writeoff not surprising 

CBC News reported last year that Mactech Distance Education had one of the worst student loan repayment rates in Canada.

The North Sydney company announced in August it was closing for business reasons and would no longer accept new students after September.

At that time, Nova Scotia still had $1.3 million in loans invested in 58 students currently attending Mactech — an average of $22,413 apiece. The last of those students is scheduled to finish in June 2016.

"Prior to this, our department was aware that graduates of Mactech were having problems repaying their loans after graduation. We had been looking at Mactech's operations, programs, and financial accountability," said Preeper.

"We had also been monitoring their repayment rates, and meeting with them to be sure we had a clear understanding of their efforts to improve their repayment rates, when they made the decision to close. As Mactech is in the process of closing and is no longer accepting new students, no additional student loans would be issued."

In a six-year period ending December 2013, nearly half of Nova Scotia's student loans granted to attend Mactech defaulted following their studies, according to an analysis by CBC News of numbers obtained through freedom of information laws.

Last year, Nova Scotia wrote off $1 million in university student loans and $284,000 for loans taken by students attending the Nova Scotia Community College.