Dental Hygiene Program at CNC expected to return
Prince George, B.C.- The Dental Hygiene program at the College of New Caledonia didn’t accept any new students this fall, and won’t accept new students for the fall of 2016, but that doesn’t mean the program is gone for good.The College has made some revisions to that particular program and is waiting for the changes to be approved by the Ministry of Advanced Education. The Ministry will need to determine whether a revised tuition is appropriate for the revised Dental Hygiene curriculum. Both faculty and the Prince George and District Dental Society are being consulted as part of the re-introduction process.
It’s all about timing. The Ministry review is a process that can take a long time, and right now, the College is into its budget planning. So, without the approval for the revised program and a possible revised tuition, the College cannot plan for a program that doesn’t yet have a green light.
That means the Dental Hygiene program won’t be available for September 2016, but, there are efforts underway to have it in place for intake for classes starting in September of 2017.
The good news is, the Dental Assisting program will carry on, and will be accepting students for classes that start in September of 2016.
In the meantime, the college is offering DENO 150 – an introductory course to Dentistry, which is used as one criteria for both of the Dental Programs’ selection processes.
The fate of the programs has been front and centre for the better part of a year.
- March, the Board of Governors said it was suspending intakes for both the Dental Assisting and Dental Hygiene programs for 2015.
- April – The Board confirmed suspension of the Dental Hygiene program intakes for 2015
- May – The College announced it would accept students for Dental Assisting for 2015 after the program changes were approved by the Education Council.
- Nov – College announces Dental Assisting program will accept students for Sept 2016, but the Dental Hygiene program remains suspended
CNC Faculty and the District Dental Society are being consulted as part of the re-introduction process for the Dental Hygiene program when it returns.
Comments
The hygiene program revisions are a smokescreen to permit CNC to drastically increase the tuition fees ie. existing proven program produces competent graduates but is underfunded due to government tuition increase limits of 2% . BUT if program is suspended and creatively revamped so it is viewed as a new entity then a drastically increased tuition fee can and will be imposed. The private hygiene schools in the province charge at least 2X the present CNC fees—so a student can stay locally for a lower cost of living and the convenience of being closer to” home” if they are prepared to pay the higher tuition fee at the NEW CNC program. Otherwise you have to leave PG and pay increased school and living costs to attend a public or private hygiene school.
Upon a recent visit to my dentist , this topic came up.
I was told that CNC had approached the dentists and asked them to
contribute $500,000 to get the program up and running.
The lack of funding, from the government comes from the so called
lack of demand for jobs , in the Dental care field.
This information is obtained by the number of job posting for dental
care jobs that are posted. On a certain job posting site.
I don’t know the site.
Most jobs in the dental care field are filled by word of mouth.
So maybe the BC Dental Society can start having all jobs pertaining to
Dental health care field ,posted to that site.
In the mean time the program will struggle on.
If nothing is done you will have shortage in 5-6 years.
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