Career college in Canada has a number most people haven't heard and it's worth stopping on. 71% of graduates go directly into a field related to their training. The average student is in their 30s, has children, and is making a deliberate choice to retrain, not falling back on something. One to five o'clock every day is what they have. Career colleges are built around that window. Universities and community colleges generally are not.

A massage therapist trained in Alberta wanted to move to BC. The only pathway the system offered: go to Newfoundland, get recertified, then qualify for BC from there. A personal support worker doing the same job in a care home in Nova Scotia, Ontario, and BC can't just move between provinces and keep working. Canada needs welders, electricians, dental hygienists, and healthcare workers. The regulatory structure governing who can work where is actively slowing that down, and Michael Sangster appeared in parliament last week to say so directly.

The first person in a family to graduate from post-secondary education, walking across a stage into a logistics career at a company like Amazon or Canada Post, with ten family members watching, changes the trajectory of that family. That outcome is happening inside career colleges right now at a rate most Canadians don't know about.

Topics: career college Canada, trade school Canada, skilled trades shortage, interprovincial credential recognition, retraining adults Canada

GUEST: Michael Sangster | @‌naccanada | CEO, National Association of Career Colleges

Originally aired on 2026-02-25