Starting this semester, UFV’s school of business will no longer be offering its one-year aviation diploma.
The school of business, up until this semester, offered two diploma program options: one that is one year in length and one that is two years. However, due to a lack of applicants, the one-year option has been suspended.
“We simply don’t have anyone in the program,” said Frank Ulbrich, director of the school of business. “We came to the point where we said it doesn’t make sense to offer two different options when one is never asked for.”
The difference between the two programs was that the one-year option requires students to have already completed 30 university credits. However, Ulbrich noted that attracting current university students doesn’t happen frequently.
“We haven’t had any students in it for a very long time and the main reason is probably that when you want to go to university, when you want to do your pilot training and combine it with university studies, that’s where you start,” he explained. “Very few first go to university and then say ‘I also want to become a pilot.’”
Although the program has not had anyone enrolled in it for over a year, it was suspended for two years rather than discontinued altogether.
“When you discontinue a program it is more difficult to bring it back to life so we decided that a suspension would probably be a good alternative for us,” Ulbrich said. “It gives us the opportunity to suspend it for two years and then to reevaluate again when we meet with our partner [Coastal Pacific Aviation] and see if anything has changed. If not, then we will eventually go forward and recommend a discontinuance of the program, but if something should change that is unexpected, then there is an opportunity still to bring it back to life.”
By suspending and eventually terminating the program, the department will be able to focus more time and funding on a new initiative — the introduction of helicopter training into the diploma program.
UFV signed a memorandum of understanding with Chinook Helicopters Limited last year which will give students the opportunity to expand beyond the current fixed-wing training that is offered.
“It takes some resources to have a program that we offer but don’t offer, and we’d rather take those resources and make the other one stronger and make it more attractive,” Ulbrich explained. “What we’re planning is to add to the two-year aviation diploma a new stream so that our students can decide if they want to be an aircraft pilot or a helicopter pilot.”
The program is currently still being developed with no implementation date yet decided.
“We’re working with the other company on looking into how the curriculum would need to look so that we meet Transport Canada regulation requirements and academic standards from the university as well,” Ulbrich said. “I think probably by summer we’ll have the proposal ready and then it depends on the approval process how quickly we can implement it.”
Ulbrich also noted that there is potential for the helicopter training to eventually expand into the four-year aviation degree program as well.
“We want to first implement it into the diploma program, and if that’s successful and there’s capacity to expand it then we’ll probably bring it into the BBA [bachelor of business administration] aviation degree as well,” he said. “It’s exciting for our students that they can actually in the future hopefully select between two alternatives, because I think there are a lot of jobs for helicopter pilots in particular.”
