Muhammad Tahir Rashid, who lives in Scarborough, was a medical doctor in Pakistan before he immigrated here to Canada.
“Since I have a medical background, I wanted to continue that here in Canada.”
He decided on a career in cardiac sonography and while shopping around for colleges that offered the program, he landed on Biztech College in Mississauga.
“It’s a 13-month program, which was one of the shortest around, so I decided to enroll.”
But just two months before he was to finish, he and other students got some bad news.
“In June of 2024, they told us in the class that we lost accreditation,” he said.
“What that means is we can’t work in the field at all,” said fellow student Nicole Legault. “To work in Ontario, you need to do an exam for sonography Canada. And to do that exam, one of the prerequisites is you must come from an accredited program.”
College programs like the one at Biztech are accredited through Accreditation Canada (A.C.) which is tasked with ensuring programs meet certain standards.
When Rashid and Legault enrolled, A.C., which publicly lists accreditation status of all colleges, had the program as “accredited with condition” from 2022 until June of 2024.
According to an A.C. spokesperson that meant the college was on notice to implement specific changes within a two year time frame to maintain accreditation.
A.C. warns students on its website that if a program is accredited with condition — there’s a risk it could be pulled during instruction.
“We knew about it being accredited with condition but a week before our college lost its accreditation status, we had this meeting with the President and he said, there’s a 95 per cent chance that we were going to maintain our accreditation status,” Legault said.
In response, Biztech said they did believe they were in good standing.
“Given the College’s assessment of its own progress on compliance with Accreditation Canada’s criteria f… the College had strong reason to believe accreditation would be achievable,” college president Harpal Dharna told us in a statement.
“The College would never have advised its representatives or its students that its accreditation status was guaranteed,” he went on to say.
When A.C. pulled the accreditation, students were left with little to show for their 11 months of work.
“We thought that we might be included because the program was accredited when we were taking it, but that was not the case,” Legault said. “They would not allow my class to write the exams so basically, all that time spent, the money and energy was for nothing.”
Dharna met with students and says he understands their concerns, saying he shares the same frustration. The college refunded all students for the amount they paid but he insists the program was of sound quality telling us the college successfully graduated 31 students in 2024, just months before accreditation was lost.
He also called out the timing of A.C’s decision.
“Accreditation Canada opted to proceed to strip accreditation rather than waiting until the students graduated,” he said. “Accreditation Canada failed to follow its own rules and procedures in the Implementation Guide in assessing the College’s progress on compliance with the accreditation criteria, to consider relevant and material evidence from the College, and to act fairly and in good faith towards the College. The College is considering its available options against Accreditation Canada.”
Speakers Corner reached out to A.C.
A spokesperson says they don’t comment on why or how they came to the decision but they explained the process on how programs are accredited.
“A.C. works collaboratively with educational institutions, professional regulatory bodies and associations to ensure the quality of programs.”
While the students believe the instruction they received was of quality, they’re now left scrambling to find a plan B.
“We suffer the most here,” Rashid said. “We put our lives on hold for 11 months and we have nothing to show for it.”
While the college did issue refunds, Rashid and Legault say they both received grant money to pursue their education. According to documents they shared with us from the National Student Loan Servicing Centre (NSLSC), when the program lost accreditation, it listed them as withdrawing from the program.
“Because of this, these grants that we got during school, they’re now making us pay back, because it appears like we dropped the program when that was not the case whatsoever,” Legault said.
Dharna says Biztech had no involvement in that process.
“The College has no insight into, or control over, NSLSC’s decision to convert grant monies into loans.”
Rashid says he is in contact with the NSLSC in hopes they’ll reverse that decision. He is waiting to hear back.
“This whole process has been frustrating,” he said. “Now we can’t pursue this career we worked so hard for unless we start all over again.” Legault added. “We have all of this knowledge that can’t be utilized.”
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