Go to university, earn a degree, find an entry-level job, and work your way up. For decades, students have been told by teachers, parents, and peers that university was the safest pathway to a stable a life.
However, that promise has now changed. More university students’ futures are up in the air than ever before. Youth unemployment remains higher than pre-pandemic levels, and young Canadians are not confident a solution will come soon enough.
So what changed?
Part of the answer is the changing demands of the labour market. University graduates now enter an employment environment where, between 2022 and 2025, job vacancies requiring bachelor’s degrees and fewer than three years of experience dropped by more than 50 per cent.
This, of course, hasn’t changed the expectation from employers for graduates to arrive with prior relevant experience. Combine that with the fact that entry-level positions are quickly being replaced with AI, it comes as no surprise that 40 per cent of graduates in Canada are underemployed, and roughly one in ten are flat-out unemployed.
At the same time, the federal and provincial governments are pouring billions of dollars into areas such as the skilled trades, infrastructure, and defence due to growing labour market needs. By 2033, Canada will need more than 1.4 million new skilled trades workers, prompting major investments in trades attraction, such as workforce training programs and subsidies.
If the federal government is on a mission to “Build Canada Strong,” prioritizing trades workers and manufacturers is not unreasonable, but it is unclear where many university students’ expertise and degrees fit into this agenda.
Canada, of course, still needs countless university-educated professionals and skills — but it does expose a growing contradiction.
Governments are increasingly organizing economic policy around physical infrastructure, defence capabilities, and industrial capacity, but as Canadian universities continue to struggle financially, they must compete for international and domestic students. Attracting said students depends on international rankings and prestige, criteria mostly weighted and awarded through research performance.
This financial dependence creates a counterincentive structure, compared against government and labour market needs.
Meanwhile, work-integrated learning opportunities can cost universities hundreds or even thousands of dollars per student and, for many degrees, does not significantly contribute to reputation or rankings.
In other words, universities are being pushed to prioritize the things that make them look competitive as institutions, not necessarily the things that make their students competitive as employees.
That distinction is critical because employers are looking for students with soft skills, not just hard skills like research. They want tangible proof that graduates can work in teams, communicate clearly, solve problems in real workplaces, and adapt quickly. Yet, universities emphasize research and technical skill and fail to provide enough opportunities for students to develop the practical and interpersonal skills employers need.
Universities, therefore, are going out of style because the promise attached to them is becoming harder to deliver, and the skills they teach are currently less essential to the workforce and economy.
If universities want to remain the obvious choice for the next generation, they cannot rely on reputation, research and rankings alone. They need to better connect education to employment, expand work-integrated learning, respond to labour-market needs, and prove a degree can still provide a meaningful pathway into the economy students are actually entering.
The workforce Canada needs is changing and universities, employers, and governments need to work together through this transition if we want our institutions not only to remain prestigious, but to remain effective.
Lilly Meechan is a fourth-year Political Studies Student and The Journal’s Multimedia Editor.
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