Cracking down on private colleges?
The problem of unregulated colleges in Canada is widespread and elusive
Take the example of Vancouver University Worldwide. In 2007, the B.C. Supreme Court ordered the school to shut down, the latest effort to regulate the illegal university in a 15-year dispute with the province. In court, the province said that the private university, with offices on Beatty Street in Vancouver, was breaking the province’s Degree Authorization Act by offering degrees without permission. But the university’s president Raymond Rodgers said that the school did not operate in B.C. “We don’t conduct degree programs in B.C.,” Rodgers said. “The degrees are printed in other jurisdictions and signed outside of B.C. and have been for some time.” Degree ceremonies also take place outside the province.
In these cases, the question becomes: how do you define where a university operating online is? With the rise of distance education made possible by the Internet, you can take an array of classes from just about anywhere, from Nunavut to the Queen Charlotte Islands. While correspondence courses can be very convenient, the lack of physical campuses of some institutions is making it difficult to pin down just what jurisdiction a university is located in, and what laws apply.
So Rodgers ignored orders to close for over a decade and there wasn’t a hell of a lot that anyone could do about it. Colin Yip, owner of the Toronto School of Music, seemed to be echoing Rodgers’ sentiment in his comments to The Star when he said that he had no intention of refunding tuition to past students.
Now, multiple the problem by thousands. In B.C. alone, there are estimated to be more than 650 private post-secondary schools servicing over 165,000 students. Some are legitimate institutions offering a real education. And some appear to be nothing of the sort. In Ontario, according to The Star, “just 10 inspectors are tasked with the job of policing the 445 licensed schools across Ontario, with enrolment of about 27,000 students. Those same inspectors are also responsible for unlicensed schools that number 1,000 or more.”
