Pretending every degree is equal is a scam

For generations, parents were told that university was the safest road to financial security, while skilled trades were treated as a fallback for students who were less academic or less ambitious. That advice is now dangerously outdated. University can still be an excellent investment when a degree leads directly toward medicine, law, engineering, nursing, accounting, teaching, or another defined profession. What is increasingly difficult to defend is sending every capable young person into a costly four-year program without a clear career path waiting at the other end.

In Ontario, average undergraduate tuition for a Canadian student reached $8,958 for the 2025 and 2026 academic year. Multiply that by four and tuition alone approaches $36,000 before books, transportation, housing or lost earnings are considered. Among university students leaving school with government student assistance in 2023 and 2024, the average loan balance was $18,545, while thousands owed $30,000 or more.

Photographer: Mikhail Nilov

For international students, the arithmetic becomes brutal. Average Ontario undergraduate tuition was $49,802 per year, or almost $200,000 over four years before living expenses. Canada has spent years selling international education as a doorway to opportunity, but for many families it has become an extremely expensive gamble built on borrowed money, uncertain employment and shifting immigration rules.

The university premium is also not equal across every program. Statistics Canada found that undergraduate degree holders earned a median employment income of about $74,700 five years after graduation, but outcomes varied sharply by field. Engineering and computer science graduates were near $94,000, while arts and humanities graduates were around $54,600. Graduates with career and technical diplomas in trades, services and natural resources earned approximately $56,200. In other words, the label on the credential matters far less than the economic pathway behind it.

This is where the skilled trades deserve a complete reassessment. Ontario says it will need more than 400,000 workers in skilled trades related occupations over the next decade, yet youth unemployment remains above 16 per cent. An apprenticeship is not free or effortless, but between 85 and 90 per cent of it consists of paid training on the job. While many university students are accumulating debt and waiting years to begin earning, apprentices are building experience, increasing their wages and moving toward certification.

For many immigrant families, a university degree represents security, status and the fulfilment of sacrifices made across generations. That deserves respect, but sacrifice should not be confused with value. Parents do not ultimately want a framed degree hanging on the wall. They want their children to become capable, independent, and financially secure. A young electrician, millwright, welder, or refrigeration mechanic who earns while learning, avoids major debt and reaches solid financial footing in their early twenties has not chosen a lesser path. In many cases, that young person has made the wiser investment.

Photographer: Kindel Media

Government and schools need to stop measuring educational success by how many students enter university. Career counselling should show families the tuition, debt, employment rate and median earnings attached to specific programs, alongside the wages, demand and certification requirements of individual trades. Colleges and trade programs must also be linked directly to employers because training without sponsorship can become another dead end.

University is not necessarily a scam. The scam kicks in when you pretend every degree is equally valuable, that debt is automatically an investment and that a young person without a bachelor’s degree has somehow settled for less. Education should be judged by what it builds: competence, opportunity, independence and a realistic return on the time and money invested.

Ontario needs skilled workers; young people need a dependable future and families need an honest comparison before signing tuition agreements. For a student pursuing a profession that truly requires a degree, university may be exactly right. For many others, the most intelligent road to a debt free and prosperous life may begin with work boots, paid training and a trade. That is not lowering expectations; it is finally updating them.