Consumer Information

Starting June 13, 2022, all new cohorts for the Nursing PNAST didactic classes are residential now; however, non-nursing General Education courses will continue to be provided online. All existing PNAST Full Distance Education classes will be taught out until the students graduate. Please note that PNAST Generation Education courses will still be online.

All finals and much of the testing are now residential, even for those students who are still finishing online courses offered during the pandemic mandate.

For all practical purposes (Practical Nurse), we are a residential school. This paragraph overrides any of the following COVID-19 Pandemic assertions written earlier that follow.

COVID-19 Pandemic

The following is updated on April 17, 2022:

• The following is effective dated April 18, 2022, for new students enrolled after April 17, 2022, and supersedes any conflict anywhere else in this School Catalog, except in the course (Licensed Practical Nurse) syllabus.
• Potential students/applicants must appear at the entrance exam tests at the PITC Institute premises.
• Potential students/applicants must bring in their High School Diploma or transcript to be able to sit for the entrance examination.
• After obtaining the minimum passing grade in the entrance test, the student should schedule an interview with designated staff and bring the High School Transcript, if not provided earlier.
• Before the interview, the student must pay the application and registration fee of $150, payable by credit card and only on the website pitc.edu.
• The entrance test results, the transcript, and the interview scores will be evaluated and the student will be informed of the admission decision via a letter sent electronically to their email address.
• The student must attend three Head Start sessions provided before the start of the class, and the student must pass any tests conducted during the Head Start sessions. This is a prerequisite for starting the program; failure to comply will result in moving the student for consideration to the next start of the program.
• Most didactic courses and clinical courses (Licensed Practical Nurse) are residential unless otherwise notified. PITC Institute has the right to change the mode of delivery (residential or distance education) within two weeks of prior notification, at our sole discretion.
  
  End of April 17, 2022 update

PITC Institute will follow all the directives from the PA Board of Private Licensed Schools, PA Board of Nursing, our national accreditor ABHES, and USDOE that impact our school.

Residential teaching will be discontinued until the pandemic is over.

The school will only provide online teaching.

Further, PITC Institute will make our own decisions to ensure that our staff, instructors, and students are safe.

All such decisions will be communicated to the students via our website or the school-provided email.

Students are never required to show up at school during the pandemic for any reason and must use their own discretion at all times to make sure that they remain safe.

Due to the current Coronavirus Pandemic, all classes (Licensed Practical Nurse) at PITC Institute will be taken online until PITC Institute determines that returning to the residential mode of classes is safe.

Further, the student must realize that he or she is enrolling on the Practical Nurse AST program which has General Education courses that will be blended with the nursing courses and will finish the whole program in 90 weeks for the daytime program and 100 weeks for the Evening program.

Students will be able to sit for the PN-NCLEX exams only after the successful completion of the entire program.

Because we are offering online courses only during this COVID-19 epidemic, the admission policy is modified.

The student is required to have the skills that require computer proficiency that will enable the student to take online courses, such as computer keyboarding, file creation, upload, download, Internet search, Internet application, using Google applications, and google search and report creation.

New Student Orientation will also be conducted online. High-speed Internet service, a desktop, laptop, or tablet will be needed for the online classes and assignments for this program, and students are solely responsible to procure and maintain the devices used.

E-Book (Electronic Textbook) codes will be provided for each textbook and students are responsible for contacting and arranging the delivery of the hard copy textbooks from the publishers.

However, the school will pay for the textbooks directly to the publishers, and this payment will be included in the financial aid package for the student.

Schools will not provide physical textbooks for the General Education courses — only E-Book codes will be provided to the students.

The student is required to attend three technology and information sessions online and successfully complete the requirements for these sessions.

The purpose of these technical sessions is to acquire the skills necessary to be able to take online classes.

Also, the students will be briefed on the requirements of admissions and financial aid paperwork needed to be able to start the program.

The inability to successfully complete the three technology and information sessions may disqualify the student from starting the program for which the student has enrolled.

Because of COVID-19, the schedule of graduation is revised for the Practical Nurse — PN-Diploma and the PN AST programs; the same is the case with the Medical Assistant Programs.

Our clinical/externship sites are not accepting students for the clinical/externship courses, and we are not sure when the situation will change.

PITC Institute will not be able to send students to the clinical/externship sites until the clinical/externship sites are ready to accept the students, AND unless we feel that it is safe for our students and the patients.

Further, all didactic courses are and will continue to be online for the foreseeable future, until the pandemic situation improves to the point that we can safely open the residential classes.

The graduation will be delayed by at least two to three months, as we cannot graduate students until we can provide the hands-on clinical/externship training.

We will revise the graduation dates as more information becomes available.

PITC Institute will make all efforts to correct any computer issues any student will encounter while taking the online classes, including issues with test taking.

We have assigned personnel to solve computer-related problems.

However, if computer-related problems stop the students from taking tests, then it is mandatory that the student must come to the premises physically to take the test at the school, at the scheduled time that the school will provide them in writing; the test will be scheduled no later than 24 hours of the originally scheduled test time. 

If the student does not show up at school and still wants to take the test from home while he or she continues to have computer problems, then that test will be graded without any consideration of the computer problems.

As the school has decided to put on hold the offering of the PN Diploma program — and have switched to PN Associate in Specialized Technology that contains the General Education courses, in addition to the nursing courses — we are making special provisions for those who were previously enrolled in the PN Diploma program, have failed courses, and re-enrolled in the PN AST program; for such students who are currently active students, we will offer the option to only take the required nursing courses to get through the originally intended diploma program; however, such option will not be provided to any student who is not currently active (on August 13, 2020), had previously enrolled in the PN Diploma program,  was withdrawn, dropped or cancelled, and want to come back to the school to re-enrol.

If under the COVID-19 provisions detailed in the PN Handbook, any student who fails a course is given remediation to provide another opportunity for the student to pass the course, the grading of that course will be delayed until the remediation completion date plus five business days.

During the remediation, the student is still in the failed status for the course in question.

However, it is quite possible that another required course will start, that the student may like to take, and that course has the prerequisite of passing the course under remediation.

In this case, the student will be provided with the option, in the interest of saving the graduation delay, to take the next course, with the written student waiver that the student will be withdrawn from the course if he or she fails the remediation.

When a student is invited to the school premises, the student must sign a waiver before he or she is allowed to go into the premises.

It is mandatory to wear a mask that covers the mouth and the nose at all times.

It is also mandatory for each person to be at least six feet away from any other student or instructor, at all times.

Anyone student failing to comply with these mandatory rules will be immediately asked to leave the premises; if the student refuses, then law enforcement will be contacted to remove the student.

PITC Institute is using third-party services such as Proctorio to conduct Tests and Examinations for the didactic and clinical courses remotely over video streaming.

Proctorio has strict requirements that must be adhered to ensure the integrity of testing.

The entire test must be taken in the privacy of a room.

The entire testing is captured on the video and proctored and requires no talking, no sharing of information, no individual present in the room at the time of testing, and no books, notes, or any other resources accessible to the student at the time of the exam.

Anyone caught cheating on the test will be terminated from the program, without any recourse of coming back to school.

PITC Institute has implemented an incomplete grade designated as “I” that is given to a course that is not completed and graded. For the grade point average calculation, “I” gets no grades and is not calculated in the GPA.

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