Bachelor of Early Childhood Care and Education

The Bachelor of Early Childhood Care and Education is a four-year degree with practicum placements, leading toward BC Early Childhood Educator certification and the leadership tier of the sector.

Coursework covers child development from infancy through school age, curriculum design and emergent practice, observation and documentation of learning, play-based pedagogy, inclusive practice and supporting children with additional needs, infant and toddler care, health safety and nutrition, family and community partnerships, Indigenous perspectives in early learning, and administration and leadership of early childhood programs. Supervised practicum runs across multiple settings and age groups.

The degree exists because the sector has a ceiling problem: a two-year diploma qualifies you to work with children, but the supervisory, policy, program-design and training roles increasingly ask for a degree. For international students there is a further advantage — as a bachelor’s degree it sits outside the PGWP field-of-study restriction that applies to the diploma version of the same subject.

Capilano University is a fully public teaching university (DLI O19280078102) holding university status since 2008, and the credential earned here is identical to the one awarded at the North Vancouver main campus — the transcript does not distinguish between campuses. Classes are small, faculty teach rather than delegate to assistants, and tuition sits well below the big Vancouver research universities.

CapU Squamish is an 18-acre purpose-built campus at 3200 University Blvd, opened to serve the Sea-to-Sky corridor — roughly 10 minutes from downtown Squamish, 45 from Whistler and an hour from Vancouver. It has its own library, athletic centre, sports field, dining and student housing on site rather than functioning as an outpost. Cohorts are very small, and housing costs materially less than Metro Vancouver, which is the practical reason many international students choose this campus over the main one.

Its field maps to CIP 13.121 (Early childhood education and teaching). As a bachelor’s degree, graduates are exempt from the November 2024 PGWP field-of-study restriction and may qualify for a Post-Graduation Work Permit of up to three years. Full-time on-campus study and graduation remain the conditions, and final decisions rest with IRCC.