Why do community Colleges spend 2-years to properly train a Dispensing Optician while private Colleges are able to do it in a much shorter timeframe?
Part of the answer is different student demographics. The average high school graduate continuing to opticianry training at a community College is under 20-years old. This young person is expected to grow while attending College, and usually leaves school 2-years later a more mature adult.
Private Colleges have a different demographic. Their student population is generally much older, and some are recent immigrants with advanced degrees that are not recognized here in North America. Some are forced into making a career change due to labour upheavals, while others must retrain due to workplace injuries. In many cases this private school demographic have families to support, and want to rejoin the workforce as quickly as possible. They don’t want to spend 2-years in an opticianry school, and they don’t care to spend their Friday nights drinking with classmates at the local pub. They want a course that offers comprehensive 'accelerated' career training, in the shortest timeframe possible.
All private and public opticianry programs teach various competencies listed in three categories... 1) Must Know (core), 2) Should Know and 3) Nice to Know. Each autonomous opticianry school arranges its program to include these three categories. But ‘old school’ programs continue to offer 2-year program duration with little regard for new advances in learning technologies, Internet, U-Tube, webinars, on-line, etc. Their goal is less about bringing a student to the workplace in a timely manner, and more about maintaining their program's 2-years duration, because “its always been a 2-year course”.
The business model of private career training encourages the finding of new advanced training aids that can promote quicker learning, as time spent in school is an important consideration in their business model. Longer times spent in school usually results in higher student debt, and career training is not enhanced by farming out the ‘hands-on’ practical portion of opticianry training to well-meaning store owners. It’s simply a gamble... some store owners enjoy teaching students and can do a credible job, while other employers look at students simply as a source of low-cost labour and often don’t have the patience, energy or time to devote to continuous student questions.
The invention of the Internet is the greatest source of increased public knowledge since the Gutenberg press allowed for the mass printing of books. Yet the Internet has not produced any effect on community College course durations. Fortunately private Colleges are in a position to use all current training technologies and can reduce opticianry course durations without compromising optical competencies. IMHO shorter duration programs are the wave of the future.
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