I first attended the Canadian Aesthetic Academy in 2007, and as soon as I finished my first week at school there. I had a list of complaints that the other students and I created. The list is as follows.

1) Not enough teaching time per subject. Each subject was three times a week for 4 hours. There is definitely no way a student can learn about each aesthetic subject in this little amount of time.

2) The textbooks were photocopies of other textbooks, and also contained other type- written information with many grammatical errors.

3) The equipment was out of date. Not even relevant to what the spa industry is using now.

4) There was never enough supplies for the students to use to practice services on each other.

5) They promised a low-student teach ratio of 10:1. This was never the case, there were at least 18+ students in each class, never allowing us to fully practice services on each other or learn the theory in depth of each subject.

6)The director mentioned that you can receive a Medical Aesthetics Diploma if you pay an extra $1000+ on top of the tuition for the Medical Aesthetics Certificate by completing 240 hours of co-op. However, the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities does not recognize a diploma in Medical Aesthetics. It is only a certification. Also, students should not have to pay the extra $1000 to practice, it should be included in the tuition so that students are job ready when they graduate.

We gave this list to our student council at the time who said he would speak to the director (Nella Lanzellotti) about our complaints. However, a week later he was fired from the school and our complaints never got resolved.

I found a job in a spa, but was let go because my skills were not satisfactory to the manager of the spa. The manager told me she blames the school I attend, because of their horrible reputation. The spa I worked at is now trying to get their own aesthetics school running, because they feel they want students to be trained properly.

I am upset that I attended this school and wasted $9000 on a skill that I can't even use.