CAMBRIAN’S BBA READY TO LAUNCH

Cambrian College is set to launch the first three-year degree program ever offered at an Ontario college. Cambrian College is introducing a new three-year Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) degree program, to meet the growing demand for business professionals.

“This is completely new territory for Ontario’s colleges as we prepare students for the business world of today and tomorrow,” said Dr. Paula Gouveia, Vice-President Academic at Cambrian College. “Employers are demanding more flexibility in terms of the skills and knowledge graduates are bringing to the table, and we’re responding with this firstever, three-year degree program. Our new BBA enables our students to be more competitive on a global scale and opens doors to further education, nationally and internationally.” all degrees offered by Ontario colleges and is based on the Post-secondary Education Choice & Excellence Act, 2000, the legislation under which PEQAB operates. PEQAB has always interpreted this broadly/permissively as regards Ontario college degrees and will continue to do so in regard to the new three-year degrees. The requirement does have meaning – it does preclude Ontario colleges offering some kinds of degrees which Ontario and other universities do offer: Bachelor of Arts: English, Bachelor of Arts: Philosophy, for instance. Also, this restriction links to the Economic Need consideration for Ontario college degrees.”

The three-year BBA degree program provides students with a blend of foundational knowledge of various functional areas of business, critical-thinking and decision-making skills, and on-the-job learning. Students enrolled in the three-year BBA also have the possibility of taking one semester abroad with a partner university in Austria, Finland or Ireland.

Advocacy Leads To Benefits

It has taken years of advocacy to get to this point. “I started at PEQAB in 2013, met with Linda Franklin (of Colleges Ontario) very early in my tenure – and she had two main issues she wanted PEQAB to address: the first was the fact that Ontario colleges were not allowed to call their four-year degrees ‘Honours’ degrees – despite the fact that they met all the four-year (‘Honours’) degree requirements. The second was the right of colleges to offer three-year degrees – and it took until 2022 to successfully promote that to the Ministry,” says Brown.

Linda Franklin, former President and CEO of Colleges Ontario, recently stated: “In April of 2022, The Ontario government announced that colleges can develop new three-year degree programs. This was a historic breakthrough, after a decade of advocacy work on this, that ensures more students will acquire the professional expertise to succeed in their careers.

It’s immensely rewarding for me, as I retire, to see a policy change realized that is so clearly a game-changer for Ontario students, communities, and our economy. It elevates our post-secondary system on the world stage, opens up a much greater range of career options for graduates and drives economic growth through a more highly qualified workforce.”

Brown agrees that it’s good news for Ontario and for post-secondary students. “The principal benefit sought – and we think – realized in the new three-year degrees, both for students and for Ontario society is that students get out into the labour market sooner and at less expense, both to the student and to the system. And as long as the threeyear degrees are also high-quality programs that prepare students not only with the skills to be job-ready but also with the transversal skills (critical thinking, communication, teamwork) through which they can continue to develop in their careers, then the reduction in time and cost for schooling is a pure advantage,” explains Brown.

Sources:

• www.collegesontario.org/en/news/ontario-governmentapproves-new-three-year-degrees-at-colleges

• https://cambriancollege.ca/news/2023/02/cambrian-collegelaunches-first-ever-college-three-year-degree-program

• www.peqab.ca/ManualsGuidelines.html