Most Educated but not Best Employed

February 6, 2026

In 2026, I am thinking, writing, crafting, and consulting with a purpose in mind: that of the educator. To me, the educator spans the wide range of work that I do, both formally and informally, in and outside of postsecondary institutions, workplaces, conferences, professional development sessions, and on/through social media.

Canadian Prime Minister Carney described Canada as one of the most educated countries in the world. Yet, I have mixed feelings about the value of assertion for a number of reasons. Perhaps it’s the very word “education.”

What does the education mean today and what is it for?

Finding a job? Building a career? Learning to be an effective citizen? A social determinant of health? Societal prosperity? All of the above?

Or is it securing a credential (and then another, and then another) to stay afloat in a quickly changing job market where there is a great deal of volatility, disruption where there is simultaneously underemployment of “highly educated” talent and gaping skills and labour shortages across numerous sectors?

In short, are Canadians among the most credentialed and yet still suffer an economy of underemployment and skills and labour shortages?

As someone who has long worked “inside the credential machine” AKA higher education and professional learning, it’s increasingly clear that we’ve created a system where “credential seekers” turn to colleges, universities, continuing and executive education and other providers for a certified product.

These providers create government approved courses that provide valid and valuable learning outcomes. However, these outcomes may or may not provide sufficient opportunity to develop the skills that we might culturally assume to be part of an education and that we are increasingly call “human”: critical thinking, analytical thinking, reasoning, verbal, nonverbal and written communication, interpersonal dialogue, social and situational intelligence. The list can go on.

Moreover, across in-person and asynchronous programs, the social, interpersonal, and informal elements of learning that would support this skill development, including structured and unstructured opportunities for mentoring, networking and cross instructor-learner dialogue. These often require investments in time, but also mindset, that the credential seeker is often reluctant to invest and/or cultivate and the credential provider finds too unwieldy, expensive, and unmeasurable to provide (beyond a small scale).

In addition, these learning outcomes are static rather than dynamic. While courses can be updated frequently, learning outcomes that have to go through various approval processes, tend not to be. So, the credential, once achieved, several years down the road, may not match the credential seeker’s needs nor the current expectations of hiring managers.

In many cases across Canada, in provincial jurisdictions that partially fund postsecondary education, the focus remains on inputs (“bums in seats”) rather than outcomes (beyond what some institutions track as a percentage of employment). Higher education administrators may plan new credentials to meet new labour demands, yet these do not address the larger challenges of providing more flexible and agile systems of learning, education, skills development and social and informal learning that addresses both underemployment and labour and skills shortages.

So, as Canadians, we might be the most educated, but it’s often in the form of credential or two or three…

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