The Ontario Association of Career Colleges is now called Career Colleges Ontario. This association represents private career colleges like the ones advertising in this issue, Access Business College, Durham Business and Computer College, IPGenius. The great advantage of these colleges is that they are small. You won’t get lost trying to find your room; they know your name so you don’t have to go by your student number; you receive individualized instruction.

Many newcomers will be familiar with such privately run career colleges as in many countries there are no public resources to fund an infrastructure of public colleges, so teachers set up their own schools. In Ontario and Canada there are many career colleges which often have advertisements in employment newspapers because they are focused on job skills.

On their website is a June 2012 study titled the Impact of Ontario Career Colleges which was undertaken by Higher Education Strategy Resources. This is a broad sector study and there are some interesting findings. In August 2011 there were 62,500 students enrolled on career colleges in Ontario. The post-graduate employment rate is 83.4%. The student to staff ratio is 8:1

The website home page has a section just for students. One area leads to help with a college search. Finding all the career colleges is a bit of challenge as there are hundreds in Ontario. They are a great resource for shopping around.

There is also a new initiative, an alumni portal: students who have graduated from a career college can now join an alumni association, network with each other and get group discounts. Check out CCO.