NAIT offered the only accredited court reporting program in Canada, until it was one of 18 programs paused by the institution on May 17. Alumni, students and industry members say the pause could significantly harm both Canadians and the industry.
The Captioning and Court Reporting program teaches students to transcribe real-time speech at 225 words per minute and higher. Students typically complete a one-year certificate through the Court Transcription program first, and then move onto the two-year Captioning and Court Reporting diploma. For the past five years, 100 per cent of graduates found employment in their field, working in the legal system, offering real-time captions for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and more. So why was the program paused?
NAIT was not available for an interview, but an emailed statement from Dr. Tamara Peyton, the Dean of the School of Media and Information Technology, said “the program has faced ongoing challenges, including low enrolment, curriculum and program structure concerns, reduced labour market demand, and growing costs to deliver.”
But for students in the Court Transcription program who intended to continue their education and enrol in the paused two-year, those reasons fall short.
“Myself, like many, we’re stuck,” said Rhekia Fahssi, who uses they/them pronouns. “There is no other avenue forward for us.”
Fahssi is currently finishing their one-year Court Transcription certificate and said that like 99 per cent of their classmates, if not all, they intended to continue with the diploma program after.
“I am frustrated and I’m terrified. I took out student loans. I completely altered the course of my life with the intent of doing this two-year program, graduating, getting into a field and immediately getting work,” Fahssi explained.
‘[NAIT has] thrust me into debt, with no security, and no pathway forward.”
One-year certificate not enough to work in field, says industry
While Fahssi and the other students who finish the Court Transcription program will still receive their certificate, the employment opportunities are vastly different from what completing both programs would offer.
“Nobody goes into the program saying, ‘I want that certificate to be a transcriptionist,’ because you don’t need one to be a transcriptionist of legal transcripts for Alberta Justice,” said Elise Eichmuller, who took the program in 2006 and now works as a Court Reporter.
“You have to show that you can type … at a certain amount of words per minute, that you have some experience with transcripts and legal procedures, and that’s it,” she said. Graduates of the one-year certificate can work as “court transcriptionists, scopists and proofreaders,” according to NAIT’s program webpage.
Cindy Gordon, Executive Director of the Canadian Hard of Hearing Association (CHHA) in Edmonton often hires captioners for events and accessibility, but a student with only the certificate doesn’t have the skillset required.
“We would never hire a first-year student to do any of our captioning because their knowledge base, their database, their skill level is not there,” she explained. “There’s nothing really you can do with those skills until you take the second year, unfortunately.”
Pause will have big impact across Canada
The Canadian Occupational Projection System, which analyzes labour market conditions, projects that there will be 5,800 job openings for court reporters between 2024 and 2033. In 2023, 48 per cent of court reporters were over 50 years old, with 7,900 people working in the field. Without a new influx of court reporters, the legal system could face huge delays.
“In terms of trial work and depositions and court cases, there’s going to be more and more and more delays because you can’t have a proceeding if you don’t have a court reporter,” Fahssi explained. “And then people’s loss to accessing justice, because after a certain point of delay, people have the right to a trial in a timely manner. Cases get dismissed if they go over the time allotted for them to be brought forward.”
And the impact goes beyond the legal system. With over 100,000 people in Edmonton who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing, a lack of qualified court reporters and transcriptionists spells a lack of access to reliable services—something Gordon believes is ultimately a human rights issue.
“We fought very hard for [captioning] to be part of society, part of reality, something that would never be taken from us,” she said.
“Somehow everyone thinks this is a luxury for us. This is a necessity.”
Without an option for an accredited program in Canada, Gordon worries there will be a lack of qualified court reporters and captioners.
“You’re going to see that number that is already small dwindle to nothing, and there will be nobody,” she said.
“Right now, if I have an event that I need to go to, I need to contact someone two to three weeks in advance, to book somebody to be able to caption it. What’s going to happen when those people are just overworked now and then they start retiring?”
Calls for different evaluation measures
NAIT’s statement said that the decision to pause Captioning and Court Reporting “was not a reflection of the value of the program, its dedicated staff, or the careers it supports.”
Instead, the pause was part of a review to “ensure NAIT’s academic offerings remain sustainable, relevant, and aligned with the evolving needs of students and industry.”
But for those involved in the program and industry, the criteria NAIT is using to decide which programs to pause don’t line up with the reality of the program.
Shauna MacDonald, President of the NAIT Academic Staff Association, shared that 40 per cent of students never meet the speed requirements to move onto the Captioning and Court Reporting program—but while that number may seem high, MacDonald said it’s actually the best program in North America for getting people through successfully.
“It’s just simply a challenging program, and so you can’t measure it with the same yardstick that you’re measuring other programs with.”
The program essentially teaches students a new language, and the physical dexterity required to type on the stenography machine isn’t feasible for every person.
Students will often have to take classes through NAIT’s Continuing Education to practice their speed and hit the required benchmarks. Those classes “make good money,” according to MacDonald, but the program isn’t sure that revenue is being factored into NAIT’s stated program delivery cost.
“I am frustrated and I’m terrified. I took out student loans. I completely altered the course of my life with the intent of doing this two-year program, graduating, getting into a field and immediately getting work.”
NAIT says it costs $16,476 to deliver one year of the program to a full-time student (called the Cost per Full Load Equivalent, or FLE). But MacDonald said the program isn’t sure how that number was calculated.
“We sort of suspect that the cost per FLE is just looking at the two credit programs, without recognizing that these speed tests offered in [Continuing Education] are part of the income, part of the revenue, for these programs.”
Engagement ongoing, but the program’s future is unclear
NAIT is now in their engagement phase, where they say they are connecting students, alumni and industry through a focus group and survey. They also received numerous letters from the community.
But for students like Emily Yiu, who was accepted into the Captioning and Court Reporting Program and intended to start in September, it’s too little, too late.
“I’m kind of held in limbo,” she said. “I just don’t know whether I can continue on, or whether I should switch, or really, anything.”
And Yiu isn’t the only one—MacDonald said there are 58 students affected by the pause. Some are in the process of completing the certificate and would have been eligible for the diploma, while others are taking speed classes to get ready for their second year. During NASA’s consultations with NAIT, MacDonald raised the question of the ethics of pausing the program without a plan for these 58 students.
“You have a number of students who, although they were registering for a one-year certificate program, had every intention of completing a diploma because they knew that’s what they needed to be employable,” said MacDonald.
“We have 58 students that are affected by this. And have nowhere else to go.”
Some staff will be impacted by the pause, as well. MacDonald said she’s already been consulted about 24 redundancies in nine of the paused programs.
“NAIT maintains that a pause does not have to go through Academic Council, only a suspension does. And so by making these pauses now like they have, they’ve made it such that before it even gets to a suspension process, there is a lack of work happening this Fall,” she explained.
“So, even though it hasn’t been suspended, there’s a pause and there’s a lack of work, and therefore there are redundancies.”
NAIT’s May 23 update did not specify when their engagement phase would conclude. It said the results would “inform recommendations to NAIT’s Academic Council and Board of Governors—and ultimately, the Ministry of Advanced Education for final decisions.” Both the Academic Council and Board of Governors do not meet again until September.
