Canadian Forces College

Canadian Forces College is not open to public admission: it provides professional military education exclusively to serving officers of the Canadian Armed Forces and to allied officers attending under bilateral or coalition arrangements, and it has no civilian or international-student application process.

Based in Toronto, the college runs graduate-level programs for majors and lieutenant-colonels and their naval equivalents through the Joint Command and Staff Programme and the National Security Programme, alongside shorter offerings such as the Joint Staff Operations Programme and the Canadian Security Studies Programme, preparing selected officers for senior command, staff, and national-security appointments. The college does not itself grant academic degrees; it partners with the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, which awards the academic credentials tied to satisfactory completion of coursework on these programmes.

Attendance is by nomination through military channels rather than open application, and candidates already hold a commission in the Canadian Armed Forces or an allied force before beginning a programme. A prospective student outside the military looking for a comparable graduate program in defence, security, or public administration should apply directly to the Royal Military College of Canada or to a civilian university offering equivalent studies, since Canadian Forces College itself accepts no applications from the general public.