Statistics Canada reported a higher percentage of working Canadians have completed post-secondary education than in any other G7 country, yet Canada has urgent shortages of skilled labourers..About six in ten of Canadians aged 25 to 64 have a university degree or college accreditation, better than the 55.6% in Japan and 50.3% in the United States. Almost one-third of this age category has a university degree, which places Canada fourth among G7 peers..However, the 24.6% of Canadians with a college certificate or diploma is far above the 10.8% in the US..This educational attainment left problems. Immigrants with degrees earned outside of Canada were twice as likely as Canadian-educated people to be working at a job requiring a high school diploma or less..Despite Canada's growing population, the numbers of certificate holders in construction, mechanic, and repair technologies fell from 2016 levels..Carleton University business professor Ian Lee said he believes more focus should be put on colleges than universities. He said the heavy subsidization of university education make students more likely to study subjects not leading to better careers..“The research shown is when you make something free, more is demanded of it," said Lee.."And when a good is priced, and there's a price attached to it, people become much more, shall we say, discriminating.".Lee said Canada is going towards a model "where there's going to be fewer subsidies in future for university because of scarce resources because of the increasing demand for healthcare, and it may and it's going to involve more targeting in terms of the repayment or the of the subsidy and or repayment of tuition fees.”.University of Toronto human resources professor Rafael Gomez said market forces make for more prudent decisions..“There are fields that we presumably need people trained in, but we're subsidizing careers that aren't going to provide access or skills to those people to work," said Gomez.."Markets usually fix this problem.".Gomez said worker shortages will create responses on the price side, and wages will send signals to people these are careers they should look into. .He went on to say many people assume their university degree prepares them for work, but there’s no teacher like on-the-job experience..“Even going to university and taking practical fields like commerce, which is a very popular program, well, what does that really prepare you for?" he said.."A lot of that could be learned on the job, a lot of it is also the responsibility of firms and industries, that used to do a lot more training." .Gomez said if governments stopped bloating their bureaucracies, more talent would be left to fill vital shortages..“You don't have to have mass layoffs, like we did in the ‘90s," he said.."That would make a signal to redirect labor into areas that are more required..Frontier Centre for Public Policy senior policy analyst Ian Madsen said one strategy to alleviate trade shortages has been modelled at the secondary level in Iowa and several American states..“Parallel or co-mingled technical, vocational and other not-classic-academic education programs should be encouraged and deployed in as many high schools as possible," said Madsen.."These sorts of programs make graduates immediately qualified for paying apprenticeship positions; real jobs, paying near six figures in some cases." .Ontario and British Columbia had the highest percentages with university degrees at 36.8% and 35%, while Newfoundland and Labrador had the lowest at 20%.
