THUNDER BAY – First-year aviation students at Confederation College are essentially headed back to square one as they return to school following the five-week college faculty strike.
The college has decided any flight hours the approximately 60 students accumulated prior to the work stoppage will be reset and the program will pick up where it began in September. While there are no specific regulations from Transport Canada that would force those flight hours to be lost, school officials said consistency is expected.
“With minimal flight time prior to the strike and a five-week break for the duration of the strike, we feel that it is in the best interest of students to restart training to ensure their success,” aviation chair Paul de Oude said in a statement on Thursday.
The students on Wednesday were presented with options that included continuing with their studies, withdrawing for the year and being guaranteed a spot in the program next year or dropping out and receive a full refund with no guarantee of being accepted again if they made future applications. The students were initially told there would be a cap on the number of individuals that would remain in the program this year.
Confederation College president Jim Madder said there are two instructor positions which have been unfilled since the beginning of the school year, creating a challenge to give all students the ability to have flight time.
Madder said college officials have been able to rule out limiting the number of students in the program by securing arrangements with the private sector for all students to be able to get the required flight time, though it might take some travel.
“We don’t have enough time, people and everything else to do all of those flight hours here. What we worked on over the last 24 hours is to have other locations where people can actually get those flight hours,” Madder said, adding that might be across Ontario and possibly in Manitoba.
“We will cover students’ costs while they’re doing those flight hours.”
Madder said the majority of the students who indicated their intentions already seem to be in favour with continuing on in the program, but they were still waiting for confirmation from about half.
He also urged students who are considering stepping aside from the program to meet with school counsellors to discuss whether there would be an impact on any financial assistance they might be receiving. The deadline for students to drop out and get their tuition refunded is Dec. 5.
Second-year students are expected to graduate on time in the spring, Madder said.
