College, CEGEP or other non-university certificates or diplomas of person

Status: This standard was approved as a recommended standard on May 26, 2021.

Definition

College, CEGEP or other non-university certificates or diplomas refers to whether or not a person has obtained a postsecondary certificate or diploma of 3 months or more from a public or private college, CEGEP (either general/pre-university or technical), polytechnic, institute of technology, school of nursing, business school or vocational school. It excludes apprenticeship or trades certificates or diplomas.

Person refers to an individual and is the unit of analysis for most social statistics programs.

Usage

This variable complements the educational attainment variable by providing additional estimates of all persons who have obtained a certificate or diploma from a college, CEGEP or other non-university institution (regardless of other educational qualifications). Thus, this variable provides a more complete measure of the population with these qualifications in Canada.

This variable may also indicate when a person has other certificates, diplomas or degrees in addition to a college, CEGEP or other non-university certificate or diploma.

Conformity to relevant internationally recognized standards

This standard does not conform with any of the ISCED levels provided in the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) 2011, published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Institute for Statistics. ISCED 2011 provides minimum theoretical durations of educational programs for the purposes of classifying a program at a given education level or for determining completion (or partial completion) of a given education level. For the ISCED level that corresponds most closely with college, CEGEP or other non-university - ISCED 5 - ISCED identifies that the "duration typically varies from 2 to 3 years" (ISCED 2011, p. 17, paragraph 70). This standard does not use the typical minimum duration provided by ISCED, but instead uses a threshold of 3 months as minimum program duration for the qualification to be accepted as a college, CEGEP or other non-university certificate or diploma.

Within the context of ISCED, a college, CEGEP or other non-university certificate or diploma is the official confirmation, usually in the form of a document certifying the successful completion of an education program or a stage of a program. Qualifications can be obtained through: i) successful completion of a full education program, or ii) successful completion of a stage of an education program (intermediate qualifications).

ISCED classifies educational programs and includes a classification of the levels of educational attainment. This standard does not use ISCED levels but, rather, includes classifications that reflect the language used to describe education levels in Canada.

Classifications

Relation to previous version

  • College, CEGEP or other non-university certificates or diplomas of person May 26, 2021 to current

    This is a new standard.

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