When choosing a postsecondary educational institution and program, it is critically important that you get as much information as you can including opinions from current students and alumni.This is doubly important for university students because of how costly university education is, both in terms of time and money, as well as the fact that universities are commonly farther removed from the world of work than the polytechnic or apprenticeship models. Our service strives to go beyond traditional educational/career planning, which typically focuses on exploring individuals?€? interests and aptitudes, and allows you to get an idea for what is happening in the real world so that you can adjust your expectations and plan accordingly. After all, although they may be important components of success, just because you are passionate about and very talented in a particular field, there is no guarantee that there will be a place for you in the constantly shifting job market.

While we were university students, we observed that for a given program, after final year students graduate, they typically have little communication with the students who remain in more junior years. Consequently, the remaining students generally do not get to find out how the graduating students fared in the work force or graduate school, whichever the case maybe. Our forum here aims to provide a platform where students and prospective students alike can ask questions related to specific educational programs at specific institutions across Canada or specific provinces in the case of apprenticeships, and current students/alumni or apprentices/journey people can respond or simply post an unsolicited comment about the program/trade they are taking or have taken for the benefit of others. Please be advised that there is no guarantee that someone will be able to answer your question, nor is there any way to confirm the validity of individual responses so they should be taken with a grain of salt. However, multiple responses corroborating each other should prove more useful than having no information at all and provide a starting point for further investigation.

Our ad-free subscription data service currently allows you to explore the demographic profiles, including population size and gender distribution, of graduating classes (completions) for all programs at all Canadian public post secondary institutions between 2010 and 2022 and provincial apprenticeship programs between 2010 and 2023 for a modest annual fee. You can explore the relative size of graduating classes between programs and find out if they have been expanding or contracting in recent years at the institutional (as applicable), provincial, or national level. This will give you some idea of the relative popularity of a given program both geographically and over time, as well as how many people you may be competing with to either enter the work force or to gain acceptance to a more advance educational program, whichever the case may be. Taken together, our forum and data service aim to help clear the fog that Canadian students all too often find themselves in when tying to make important decisions that will impact their futures.