Langara College partners with Capilano University to help diploma students obtain bachelor of design degree

There's yet another collaboration between B.C. postsecondary institutions.

This week, Capilano University and Langara College announced a new "pathway partnership" to help students obtain a degree in visual communication in less than three years of full-time study.

Anyone enrolled in Langara's two-year design foundation diploma program can now transfer to Capilano University to get their bachelor's.

“This is an amazing opportunity for Langara College students and graduates,” Langara's department of design formation chair, Scot Geib, said in a news release. “This partnership opens the door to more specialized training for our students and deepens their knowledge of the design industry.”

Carol Aitken, chair of the IDEA School of Design at Capilano University, added that this will help address the needs of B.C.'s creative economy.

It's made possible because the Langara grads will receive 31 credits toward the degree program.

Capilano's bachelor of design in visual communication was launched in 2014 as a four-year program

B.C. leads the way in postsecondary collaborations

This type of arrangement isn't new in British Columbia.

For decades, B.C.'s postsecondary system has been enabling students to move between institutions in pursuit of higher learning.

That was one of the great legacies of the MacDonald Report on Higher Education in the early 1960s, which formed the basis for B.C.'s widely admired system of community colleges.

They offered academic university-transfer courses, career and technical education, vocational training, and adult basic education.

In the early days, Langara was a campus of Vancouver Community College before becoming its own entity.

One of the most significant collaborations involves UBC, SFU, BCIT, and Emily Carr University in the Centre for Digital Media in Vancouver.

In another early partnership, Langara teamed up with Capilano University, Douglas College, and Vancouver Community College on a nine-month bachelor's degree in performing arts for fourth-year students who met the program's criteria.

Since then, there have also been partnerships between private postsecondary institutions.

Stenburg College psychiatric nursing students, for example, can transfer to Kwantlen Polytechnic University. And Vancouver Film School grads can transfer to BCIT's business management advanced diploma program. 

Campus 2020 reshaped postsecondy education

One of the big changes occurred more than a decade ago when university colleges were upgraded to regional universities.

This came following 2007 release of the Campus 2020 report, which was written by former attorney general Geoff Plant.

Back then, Capilano was a community college, but it was also allowed to become a regional university, even though that wasn't a recommendation of Campus 2020.

Douglas, Langara, and VCC remained community colleges.

While the Campus 2020 report led to major changes, some of its targets have still not been achieved.

These include attaining rates of Aboriginal postsecondary participation at the same rate as the general population by 2020.

Another unmet goal is equalizing postsecondary participation and attainment rates across the province's regions and income quartiles by 2020.