Jason Altmire (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to Career Education Report. I am Jason Altmire and we have another episode today with a very interesting guest, Michael Sangster, who is the CEO of the National Association of Career Colleges.

Jason Altmire (00:20):
And for those of you who know about CECU, our organization, Career Education Colleges and Universities, you might say, "I thought that CECU was the National Association for Career Colleges," and you would be right about that. But that's the American National Association. Michael Sangster is based in Canada. He is the CEO of the Canadian National Association for Career Colleges.

Jason Altmire (00:45):
Michael and I have gotten to know each other. We've compared notes on our membership and things that we can coordinate and do together and various offerings that we can collaborate on to the betterment of both our memberships. And I just thought it would be a great idea to have Michael on the show today because he has a lot of great ideas. He's an innovator. He's been a successful businessman and knows American politics as well as the northern part of the border and as is doing great things in Canada for the Association there. So Michael, welcome to the show. And if you wanted to start off, maybe just talk a little bit about your background, because I think it's very interesting what you're bringing to the sector north of the border.

Michael Sangster (01:29):
Jason, thank you. Great to be here today. Yeah, I've enjoyed our chats about a lot of our kind of shared and common goals that we have for our members for these colleges that do the great work in Canada that I know and the ones that you are working with up in the US. My brothers, my parents lived there and spent a lot of time down in California where we've done some work. So I've spent a significant amount of time there. So I came to NAC, having been with a major telecommunications company in Canada called Telus for 15-odd years. And after that, I was the chief commercial officer of an aerospace company. But I come to NAC as an entrepreneur and somebody who's owned businesses and been involved in them over my career.

Michael Sangster (02:07):
And I was looking for one last kind of job before I retire that would be fun and exciting and rewarding. So I looked around very closely and ended up with this group, the National Association of Career Colleges that during the pandemic have faced so many challenges, but have just risen to the challenge and continue to graduate students and keep operating no matter what was thrown at them, no matter what challenge, no matter it was online, in classroom. And they just do such an amazing job creating those jobs and those careers that we need in Canada and in the US. So I'm excited to be here today and I'm excited to take on this role.

Jason Altmire (02:41):
And our side of the border, we have of a political issue where in some parts of American politics, there's just a philosophical bias against proprietary schools, against the idea of proprietary career schools. And we do everything we can to invite folks to visit the schools, to talk to the students. We talk about the outcomes and the great work that those schools do. But we do have a political challenge that we face just based upon that philosophy. Is that something that you see in Canada as well?

Michael Sangster (03:16):
Absolutely. We've faced some of those similar challenges. What I find interesting to talk about is the positive of what the pandemic's done for us, because it's focused attention on our colleges and the kind of people they graduate and the work they do. We've got a different age group that come into our colleges. It might be a second chance. It might be a third chance for some people. And they might leave as a truck driver with some of our member colleges, or they might leave as what we call a personal support worker in Canada, which is somebody who goes and works in long-term care and seniors' homes to help people on an everyday basis working with the local team there.

Michael Sangster (03:51):
So this ugly, nasty pandemic we've all been through has helped us with a lot of the political leaders and with a lot of Canadians to realize that we are actually out creating a lot of those jobs and those skills that we need in our economy. But to answer your question directly, yeah, we've faced that same challenge, but we've got some of the greatest schools in the country, our career colleges who take people and just give them a path and help them get down that road.

Jason Altmire (04:15):
Talk a little bit more about that, about the membership. How big are the schools? What specialties do they offer to students? Are they similar in structure to the type of career school that you would see in the United States?

Michael Sangster (04:28):
Yeah, so we've got about 450 members of our association. There are other colleges that aren't members, great colleges as well. Some of the colleges are as small as one or two people, family-owned business to a trucking college in Nova Scotia that I do a lot of work with, to Herzing Institute, Herzing College, big, big institutions that train thousands if not tens of thousands of people a year in their colleges. They are graduating, as I said, some of those healthcare people, legal people, accounting people, cybersecurity.

Michael Sangster (04:57):
There's a great program at one of our career colleges in Ottawa that is now graduating, I believe it's 12 people, three times a year. I probably got that wrong, but of the cybersecurity people that go right into the Department of National Defense. They're working in conjunction with our Department of Defense to graduate cybersecurity specialists. Amazing program.

Michael Sangster (05:17):
So when you go back and talk about the challenges we face and some of the attitudes that existed in the past, and then you go look at a program like that, you realize that things are changing and things are improving for us.

Jason Altmire (05:29):
Talk a little bit about these high-demand careers. And we hear so much about the supply chain, and in our country, we deal politically with the lack of truck drivers, the fact that the pipeline for training truck drivers is diminished, and the vacancies that exist are overwhelming the supply chain. And there are other issues at play there, but that's a very big political issue as well as just a reality that part of the problem with the supply chain is the lack of truck drivers. Is that something that you're dealing with in Canada? And if so, how are your schools helping to solve that problem?

Michael Sangster (06:10):
Absolutely. I think the big three I hear about the most are around supply chain people, truck drivers, and the personal support workers, those aid workers to work in the long-term care homes that I mentioned earlier. So we've dealt with that. Interesting one on the truck school, all of our schools are running full-out, flat-out doing everything they can to graduate students safely, appropriately, but get them out into the field, working for those companies. And they all step right into placements with companies. And from what I've talked to those colleges, most of their students immediately go right into careers with the placements where they did their training.

Michael Sangster (06:42):
What's interesting for you as an example is that personal support worker I talked about. I think the last number I saw was we've graduated 7,300 personal support workers in Ontario and New Brunswick, two of our provinces alone, from our colleges, just our colleges, who have gone right to work as personal support workers during the pandemic. They started and graduated during the pandemic so far. It's an incredible story. And that came from government seeing a problem, funding in Ontario, the government funded most of those students, paid their entire tuition, and gave them a bit of a living allowance to get through the program. So some creative work going on there. But those are probably the biggest three that we're seeing demand for, and we can't graduate enough students.

Jason Altmire (07:24):
Talk a little bit about the way students are able to pay for the schools. Of course, on our side of the border, we have the financial aid programs that runs through what's called Title IV of the Higher Education Act, and people to think of student loans and Pell grants. And if you're a veteran, you have the GI Bill. There's Department of Defense that can fund education. What are the ways in Canada that students are able to receive assistance for pursuing their education?

Michael Sangster (07:53):
So I'll give you a little bit of Canadian history here, but those of you don't know, we've got 10 provinces and three territories. All of the provinces are responsible for their own education system in our federated system. They're also in charge of their own healthcare system. Those are the two of the powers that have been left with the provinces.

Michael Sangster (08:12):
So we have quite a mishmash of systems in place for how funding can go on in different provinces. In Ontario, you might have the OSAP program, which is an Ontario student assistant program. Some of our colleges are eligible for that. Some of them aren't. So we've got a whole mix of solutions that go from coast to coast. It's almost too much to even get into. That make it tricky. But we've also got private enterprise at times that step in and will pay for some of the student programming as part of an agreement for a student to come out the far side as an employee. So it's not a simple system in Canada. It's different in every province.

Jason Altmire (08:47):
That makes it really difficult, I would think, to advocate for your students and for your schools. And one of the reasons that a school would join an association is to be represented. And you have Ottawa, of course, as the national capital, but in a provincial structure, as you just talked about, you have to go into each one of those provinces and you have a different set of rules. So when you're advocating for your schools and your students as an association, how do you deal with that?

Michael Sangster (09:16):
Well, I look at it as a bonus because it allows us to work with the local members very closely to ensure that we're coming up with the best solution for that region, that province. If you get into some of the smaller provinces, maybe in Atlantic Canada, they tend to be very connected to their government. So the national organization just supports them and works alongside them. In Ontario, we've got another association called the Career Colleges Ontario that we work closely with to support the government in what they're trying to do as well.

Michael Sangster (09:42):
But on the national level, one of the programs that we're working very hard on is what's called the postgraduate work permit, which is immigrate to Canada and you can, upon completing your degree or your graduate program with a career college, step right into employment.

Michael Sangster (09:58):
We have always struggled, to our earlier conversation, about being supported by government. That is one of those supports that we are working really hard to try and advocate for and get extended to our members, that those postgraduate work permits will be granted to our colleges, which they currently aren't, so that those students will immigrate to Canada and attend our schools.

Michael Sangster (10:20):
So hopefully we'll see that change in the near future. Again, I go back to... I'm a very positive individual when it comes to what's gone on with the pandemic, and I hope we can, from an advocacy point, be successful moving forward on that file.

Jason Altmire (10:35):
Do you find that in the provincial system that you described that the level of support that students receive varies based upon what province they reside or where they go to school?

Michael Sangster (10:48):
Yeah. So from province to province, we do see different resources offered. Sometimes it's different by program and sometimes it is different by province. So as I said earlier, we try and work really closely with the provincial members in that province to find the best path forward, but it is different province to province.

Jason Altmire (11:04):
And when you are advocating, do you face the same type of challenges that we face in the United States? We have, of course, a system where the regulatory environment and the administrative branch of government and then the legislative branch and legislative threats are very different. So when we advocate for our students, we have to go to the administration or go to the Congress, and the arguments that we present and the way we're able to influence that is different based upon which branch of government that you're dealing with. Do you have that same type of concern when you're advocating for students?

Michael Sangster (11:45):
Yes, I believe so. And we work very closely in the provinces with the regulators. I think what might be a little different for us is that we maybe rely on our members a little bit more because of the credibility they carry in those regions I spoke about earlier, so that their weight in that local community means a lot more than maybe we can bring from the Ottawa team as we go into Manitoba or Saskatchewan.

Michael Sangster (12:09):
So I think that's probably the best way to answer that. It is different, but we try and work really closely with the regulators on the day-to-day issues.

Michael Sangster (12:17):
We're also unique in a way, in that we actually offer some curriculum that we have designed and we have sold to our campuses, our colleges, and they teach that curriculum, and they use our online exam system to graduate NACCC-certified graduates. So that is also another bit of a different for us. So it leads us to working closely with the regulator in some of those provinces where we've offered it.

Jason Altmire (12:40):
We talked a little bit about just the philosophical opposition to the idea of a proprietary career school. What are some examples of either legislation that's introduced in Ottawa or a provincial capital or a regulation that you would face in Canada that uniquely impacts career schools?

Michael Sangster (13:01):
I think the immigration one we spoke about. Just having that access to recruit international students is probably the largest one that the association works on. Canada right now is trying to average about 400,000 new immigrants a year, 2021, 2022, 2023, which for us on a population of 38-odd million is a significant number. And a big percentage of those immigrants that we're recruiting are economic, educational. So getting access to that field of students would be a big benefit to our membership. So that's probably the biggest one in Ottawa. There's always tax issues, employment issues, other things that we can advocate on behalf of the members to help them. But that immigration on the national stage is by far the biggest issue.

Jason Altmire (13:43):
We have a mix of schools in the career sector. We have nursing schools, we have aviation and auto technicians, we have cosmetology, beauty and wellness, and we have welding and truck driving, as we talked about, the underwater construction, divers, phlebotomy, everything, medical assisting, veterinary assisting, all the things that you might think about on a day-to-day basis for folks. And you think, "Well, where do those people come from? Where do they get trained?" They get trained at our schools. That's where they come from. Is that the same type of constituency that your schools have?

Michael Sangster (14:20):
Yeah, very much so. Very similar, pharmacy, medical. A lot of administrative accounting, legal assistant, those kinds of jobs as well. We're very, very similar in the things that we do.

Jason Altmire (14:30):
And as a membership organization, when you're talking to schools about joining the association and the benefits that you offer, what would be the most tangible benefits that a school would have from joining your association?

Michael Sangster (14:43):
It's an interesting question. I took over the organization as CEO in July, and I started looking around at that very question. And I think right now... And this might be different, and some of my members might not like this, but it's fellowship. First off, it's that opportunity to connect with like-minded people trying to get through making payroll, keeping their school open, training students, recruiting students.

Michael Sangster (15:07):
Had a great conversation with one of my board members the other day about the something that we were asking him to take on. And he was looking at his recruitment numbers and wasn't happy with them and said, "I just can't do that right now. I got to turn my head back to getting the job done, to get my next session full." And this is a fairly sophisticated college, and that's where his brain was at.

Michael Sangster (15:25):
So I think for me, it's actually fellowship. If you can give people that opportunity where they're around like-minded people, you can deliver results around training and education and curriculum and lobbying, advocacy, and communications, but that fellowship. And then, the one extension I put on that was telling the good news. I always tell people I'm a storyteller, and I believe it's the association's job to make sure that Canadians, in my case, understand who career colleges are.

Michael Sangster (15:52):
I didn't fully understand it before I took a good look at joining them. And I'm kind of living by the model lately that you don't look in the rear view mirror to see where you're going. You look in the windscreen. You look in the windshield. And that's where I'm trying to take NAC and trying to take our members so that they're always looking forward and trying to get Canadians to go along with us for the ride.

Jason Altmire (16:12):
Do you find that there are within the sector in Canada, that there's a difference in the perception of the type of schools that we talked about, the more trade-oriented schools versus an online educational setting? In America, we have schools like University of Phoenix, Post University, Grand Canyon University, who are viewed as being primarily online. Many of them have physical campuses and do other things as well. But do you have that type of mix within the sector in Canada as well?

Michael Sangster (16:44):
We didn't before COVID really have that exclusively online colleges. May have been a few, but we've seen that move with many of them having no choice but to go that direction. And I don't think we're going to go backwards. Our main universities, which are all public institutions in Canada minus a couple, for the most part will remain that bricks and mortar physical facility as far as I've been told or can see.

Michael Sangster (17:10):
For our members, it's more about the longstanding reputation of where we're going, I guess is where my focus is. How do we get Canadians to fully understand the graduates and the importance of the graduates and the quality of the education that they're getting inside of our colleges? Because the quality is actually very good. And I can't compare it to online or bricks and mortar so much. To me, it's all about the quality, and that's where I spend my time focused on.

Jason Altmire (17:36):
Talk a little bit more, to wrap up, about the way employers fit into this mix. We have among our schools very good relationship with employers, large and small, where we serve as a pipeline for high-demand professions and the employers understand the value of the graduates that we're putting into that pipeline. How does it work with your schools? Do you have major employers that are actively involved?

Michael Sangster (18:03):
So yeah, the employers are very, very involved in some of our colleges. I mentioned the Department of Defense program with... I think it's Willis College here in Ottawa that is graduating the cybersecurity experts. But there's other employers across the country that are directly engaged with our colleges to ensure they're getting the kind of graduates they want.

Michael Sangster (18:20):
The other thing we're seeing is more groups stepping up, wanting to be a part of what we do to tell government and to tell others that we're actually graduating the people they need. I'm spending a lot of my time working with employers, working with large other associations who want to advocate on our behalf because they recognize that our colleges are graduating the students they need. They're graduating those people. They're going to get in a truck or step into an office and help with accounting or legal work because that's what they really need to keep their companies moving. And I think as I mentioned earlier, that is the great benefit for our members that has come out of COVID is that we've been identified, and the skills that we're graduating are crucial to our economy. So we're looking forward to keeping moving forward with those kind of groups and those kind of employers.

Jason Altmire (19:07):
That is Michael Sangster, chief executive officer of the National Association of Career Colleges, based in Ottawa and representing the career college sector in Canada. Michael, thank you very much for being with us today.

Michael Sangster (19:22):
Thank you. Enjoyed it.

Jason Altmire (19:24):
Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Career Education Report. Subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcast, Google Play, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. For more information, visit our website at career.org and follow us on Twitter at CECU ed. That's at C-E-C-U-E-D. Thank you for listening.