Nova Scotia's Private Career Colleges Act gets first major upgrade in 20 years

New provincial regulations will ensure private career colleges are offering programs that lead to a good prospect of job placement and reasonable pay.

The update to the Private Career Colleges Act came into effect in May. Jeffrey Reed, director of the private career colleges division of the province's Labour and Advanced Education Department, said it had been nearly 20 years since the act was seriously amended.

"There had been quite a bit of movement across the sector in other jurisdictions across the country, and in our own experience in the province it became clear that we needed to refine our regulations in some ways and make new provisions in them in other ways," he said.

Evaluating market demand, salary potential

The move comes after reports last year by CBC that students at some colleges in the province were unable to pay their student loan debts because their programs provided few if any job prospects. The updated regulations should help address that problem.

One of the main areas to be updated focuses on performance standards for programs.

In the past, programs were registered yearly, but after the initial time there was never a serious look at them as far as quality or whether they were meeting industry expectations for entry-level employment, said Reed.

"Under the new regulations they're going to be approved for five years with a more rigorous initial approval and at the end of five years the program will entirely expire and have to be submitted [again] as though it were new."

Constant evaluation coming for programs

The change allows for programs to constantly be evaluated based on current industry trends, including employment rates and entry-level salaries, all in order to give students a better sense of the labour market.

Reed said there is often a disconnect between what the public believes is the labour market for a certain kind of training, and the fact there might be little or no market for it. National labour market numbers are often five years out of date, he said.

In other cases, colleges advertise for programs that are successful at attracting students, but not very successful at producing graduates who find employment, said Reed.

"A lot of it is that career counselling in the high school level isn't considering the wide scope of programs that are usually delivered by private career colleges," he said.

Ensuring potential students are aware of options

"We want to make sure that [prospective students are] well informed and that there has been a regular review of the employment prospects that that particular training program leads to."

T. K. Manyimo, principal of DaVinci College of Art and Design in Halifax, said he's still reviewing the changes and how they will be implemented, but he said any time regulations are updated it's usually a good thing.

"A lot of these regulations are good in the sense they're helping us with accountability on the student end as well as keeping us as private colleges more relevant," he said.

"We're all working to the same overall end, which is the success of students and making sure that they're all able to be successful in the career they choose."

Bringing in graduate surveys

Another key change is bringing in graduate surveys.

People take and leave programs for a variety of reasons, said Reed, and the department wants to know why. While there are general indicators — such as loan repayment rates — of success at finding employment, the department wants a better sense of whether direct training programs are yielding jobs.

The survey will give the department a clear idea of whether the job a student trains for is where they find work after graduation, and whether they can service the cost of their education while working that job full time.

The department would take a closer look at a given program if there are poor job trends coming from the surveys.

'We're held to a higher standard'

Manyimo said the updates should help address concerns some people had about private career colleges as a result of negative experiences with certain institutions.

"It's important that people understand that also we're held to a higher standard when it comes to the regulatory environment."