Industry Updates
NAIT Announces Pause and Review of Captioning and Court Reporting Program
The Captioning and Court Reporting (CCR) program at NAIT was paused on May 15, 2025, meaning there will be no fall intake, and students who have completed their first year will graduate with only a Court Transcription certificate.
What that translates into for our clients and end users of our services is no new court reporters in the Spring of 2026 onwards. The class of recent grads will be the last to step through NAIT’s hallowed halls.
The ASRA’s 300 members are 99.999 percent NAIT graduates. We are proud to be alumni of this gem of a program that has earned a strong reputation across North America for producing skilled graduates from its rigorous two-year curriculum.
The court reporters you work with were trained in Alberta, provide important accessibility services to public and private industries of Alberta through CART and captioning, and are the faithful guardians of and your partners in making spoken-word records in Alberta from discoveries to trials.
There is a contingent of Year 1 students ready to continue into Year 2. They would be certified to provide court reporting services in the spring of 2026. Help us make sure you meet them by supporting the continuation of the COR program at NAIT. Please consider writing a letter to help bring attention to this issue.
Send your letters to:
ASRA (letters@asraonline.com), Laura Jo Gunter (ljgunter@nait.ca), Peter Leclaire (pleclaire@nait.ca), Patti Hergott (pattih@nait.ca), Tamara Peyton (tamarap@nait.ca), Yasmin Jivraj (naitboard@nait.ca).
The ASRA will compile all letters in hard copy form and will forward the packages to the NAIT Board of Directors, the Premier of Alberta, and other members of government and stakeholders who may be able to help keep this gem of a program going in Alberta.
The Year 1/Year 2 Debacle and Speed Testing Explained
Court reporting school isn’t for the faint at heart. NAIT intakes students and teaches them a new phonetic language that breaks down the sounds of English and allows court reporters to write briefs and phrases akin to how you would play a chord on a piano. This is how graduates from COR achieve their graduating speeds of 225 WPM with 95 percent accuracy.
The fact is that not everyone can achieve these speeds for a variety of reasons, but they have their best chance to do so through a program that is not afraid to curate and reinvent its methods at NAIT.
Year 1 Students spend semester one learning the machine and the computer software. They begin speed testing, and they have 43 testing opportunities which begin at 80 WPM and finish at 140 WPM.
Year 2 Students have 84 additional testing opportunities to build speed from 140 to 225 WPM.
This is a grand total of 127 tests of which they need to pass 33 in total to become a certified court reporter. Tests are 5-minute segments, and errors range from not capitalizing a word, not adding correct punctuation, or missing a word or phrase.
There isn’t another program in the world where you have to be mentally prepared to fail so many times to gain that coveted pass.
No one signs up for the court transcription certificate to achieve that certification. The goal is always to meet the requirements to get into Year 2.
When NAIT indicates they have met their obligation to those Year 1 students in that they have earned their court transcription certificate, they are technically correct, but they are being disingenuous about it at best because that was never the student’s intention. They cannot just, as NAIT suggests, find another program that matches the skills they picked up in Year 1 to complete a diploma.
Additionally, CCR being split into two programs is a result of NAIT’s insistence to begin with. They are happy with the enrollment levels of Year 1, but they don’t understand that without the court reporting and captioning diploma, there is no incentive for anyone to take the court transcription certificate program.
The outcome of this is that we now have Year 1 students who have obtained their speed and are excited to start Year 2 to gain their Captioning and Court Reporting diploma. The industry needs them, and jobs are waiting for these students when they are finished their training.
Alberta will directly benefit from a graduating class of 2026. This is exactly the type of career that should be encouraged and supported – a niche industry and something more akin to a trade than a traditional diploma program – but an opportunity for Albertans to take a two-year program and walk away with significant earning potential.
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