Canada must streamline education to turn degrees into jobs

Canada must streamline education to turn degrees into jobs


Look at any community college application list, and more often than not, you’ll find a sizable contingent of university graduates. The thought that a university degree is the ticket to instant career success is creating a backlash in Canada. We have more BAs than the market will bear, a growing shortage of practical skills, and an army of kids burdened with huge debt loads after spending upward of seven years in post-secondary education.

“We’re seeing a lot of university students with generalist degrees going to college to get practical, hands-on, experiential skills,” says Donnalee Bell, senior consultant with the Canadian Career Development Foundation in Ottawa. “They have to do that to have better access to jobs.”


At the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) in Edmonton, only 20% of students are directly out of high school, reports president and chief executive, Glenn Feltham. Of the remaining 80%, half have prior post-secondary experience.

The overabundance of general degree graduates in Canada has led to dismal underemployment figures, Ms. Bell explains. “What statistics don’t tell you is that the system is churning out more BAs than we can possibly absorb. In fact, OECD [Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development] ranks Canada as No. 2 in underemployment of youth. Only Spain is ahead at 50%.”

This suggests a large number of Canadian youth are getting jobs for which they are overqualified. “That’s not something to be proud of,” she says. “We should be asking ourselves, is that really the best we can do in Canada?”

The Scandinavian countries, Germany, Switzerland and Australia have produced much better employment outcomes. Ironically, these are also regions where the number of students graduating with university degrees is far lower (typically 20% to 30% depending on the country).

The strength of their education systems lies in the fact that the role of employers is infused in the educational process so career pathways are explicitly apparent, she says. To that end, they are very much involved in training and curriculum development. “The focus is on a more direct link to the labour market, so it’s not so heavily weighted on the university system.

“We just don’t do that here.”

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