OTTAWA – In the coming weeks more than one million undergraduate students are set to arrive on Canadian university campuses. Close to 300,000 of them will graduate and enter the workforce in 2017, Canada’s sesquicentennial year. Innovative learning opportunities will prepare them to hit the ground running.
Universities Canada is pleased to provide journalists with data and interview opportunities related to the start of the new academic year. Learn how universities are creating career-ready grads, advancing reconciliation efforts and providing students with the global experiences employers seek.
Some points of interest:
- Between March 2008 and March 2016, 1,416,600 net new jobs were created for university graduates. To compare, 526,600 net new jobs were created during the same time period for college and trades graduates combined. (Source: Statistics Canada, Labour Force Survey 2008-2016)
- More than 80 percent of Canadian hiring managers feel that grads with cross-cultural understanding and knowledge of a global marketplace are assets to the competitiveness of their companies. Almost 90 percent of grads who had a study-abroad experience agree that the global knowledge they gained contributed to their career achievements. (Sources: Leger Marketing employer survey for Universities Canada, 2014; and Canadian Bureau for International Education, World of Learning: Canadian Post-Secondary Students and the Study Abroad Experience, 2014)
- Social sciences and humanities graduates enjoy steady increases in earnings throughout their early careers, experiencing earnings growth of more than 70 percent over an eight-year period, similar to the rate of increases for engineering and science graduates.
(Source: Education Policy Research Initiative, “Barista or better? New evidence on the earnings of postsecondary education graduates,” 2016)
- Canadian universities offer 233 undergraduate programs and 62 graduate-level programs with a focus on Indigenous issues or specifically designed for Indigenous students – a 33% increase since 2013.
(Source: Universities Canada survey of members, 2015)
- Eighty-six percent of universities offer targeted support to meet the unique needs of Indigenous students. (Source: Universities Canada survey of members, 2015)
Interview opportunities:
Universities Canada president Paul Davidson is available for media interviews related to the experiences and opportunities in store for students headed to university campuses this fall.
