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What are some post-secondary diplomas or degrees or trades do you not find helpful landing a related job in Canada?

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  • Apr 20th, 2019 10:50 pm
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Apr 21, 2004
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What are some post-secondary diplomas or degrees or trades do you not find helpful landing a related job in Canada?

Canadian universities are not serving their clients well
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report- ... e37764629/

As students move away from the humanities, universities adapt
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/na ... e34207300/

Journalism programs struggle to adapt to changing times
https://www.universityaffairs.ca/featur ... ing-times/

Canadian universities test accepting great students with not-so-great grades -- what do you know, Kwatlen is now a University!
https://www.macleans.ca/education/canad ... at-grades/


Then I saw a post on RFD about how even Environment Science degrees (4-year Science program) is not enough to land related job opportunities.

I know we can debate about how chemical engineering is hard to come by in Ontario versus Alberta or how there aren't a lot of STEM jobs out there, especially on Math but it's probably better to discuss which programs we should be avoiding at all cost just to not have to regret spending our hard-earned money without any ROI. I know brilliant people in Arts Degrees, if given the chance, will probably do well in functions like Privacy, HR, even Communications, etc. but that's only if their resume is given a second or third look.


Would love to hear your thoughts about which programs to avoid and why.
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Oct 18, 2014
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I would do the opposite. Look at where the demand for jobs are, and figure out the degrees required to land those jobs. Then you can eliminate the rest.

For example, there may be 100 programs, just need to identify what those useful 20 programs are rather than figure out the 80.
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Which would be your top five besides doctor, banker, lawyer, dentist and nurse?

Some people want to chase their passions and if this thread helps save their future by realizing some of these may be really dead end jobs in Canada, I'm all for it. No point talking about the top 10 for this subset of people.
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Sep 4, 2007
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alanbrenton wrote: Which would be your top five besides doctor, banker, lawyer, dentist and nurse?
Computer scientist / developer, data scientist, statistician, actuary, economist, mathematician.
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frozenmelon wrote: Computer scientist / developer, data scientist, statistician, actuary, economist, mathematician.
How many actuarians, statisticians and economists are needed with today's computing / cloud computing power compared to in the past?

Totally agree with developer and data scientist since nuances may not be AI or computer's forte.

Mathematicians for?
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Sep 4, 2007
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They will always need people to do statistical and financial analysis, but the analysis will simply be much more sophisticated rather than process-oriented. Humanity's desire to know things is infinite and we're a long way away from Star Trek computers than can understand people, do complex calculations on the fly, AND spit out numbers combining unrelated types of data as if by magic.

A computer is pretty good at answering questions about the "what". "What was Canada's GDP for the last 5 years?" can be done right now. One day it might be able to answer a question like, "was x tax policy good for the economy or not"? But I'm pretty confident it won't be able to answer without human input questions like "why did it work?" or "how do we make it better?". Or complex things like "what does this policy do if NAFTA goes away?" or "what impact does the creation of a new industry like legal cannabis have on this policy?".

If a software developer puts Lego blocks together, mathematicians are the ones creating new and exciting Lego blocks. There will always, always be demand for it. Always.
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Nov 22, 2017
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If your goal is to gain employment in your field, you work backwards. You look at the fields mostly in demand in Canada, then you look at which fields have an easier path compared to others and you go from there.
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Sep 21, 2005
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Getting a university degree is one thing. But you need to have strategy to land a good job from high school year.

My daughter took 5 years to work on two degrees - Math and Business. She got an actuary intern job during the summer of after her grade 11. On her last two years at university, she got herself elected as the president of the student actuary club at university. She is the person who contact companies for events at university. She knows the HR contact of the companies who hire actuary graduate. Company is not looking for person who has only good marks. They are looking for all round person. She got an intern job with Manu Life during her last summer of university. Manu Life offered her a full time job at the end of the internship before starting her last year at university. By the time she finished her degrees, she already passed the 4th Society of Actuaries examine. She was never worry about job during her university years. She moved to Toronto to work for Manu Life after graduation. She rented an upscale 1 bedroom + den condo at downtown Toronto for $1800/m on her salary fresh off university. 3 years after university, she got the Fellow of the Society of Actuaries (FSA) designation which is the highest SA designation. I think her success was due to her laser shape vision to be an actuary since the grade 11 summer job at an actuary firm and her volunteering work.
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Dec 20, 2018
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alanbrenton wrote: How many actuarians, statisticians and economists are needed with today's computing / cloud computing power compared to in the past?

Totally agree with developer and data scientist since nuances may not be AI or computer's forte.

Mathematicians for?
Lots of need for math grads, stats and actuarial science, who do you think work the data, machine learning, Ai jobs? Not developers
Deal Fanatic
Jul 13, 2009
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StatsGuy wrote: Lots of need for math grads, stats and actuarial science, who do you think work the data, machine learning, Ai jobs? Not developers
+1

Hijacking thread: I'm seeking Act Sci with Comp Sci

Developers can built it but if they don't understand what is being built and why it needs to be built for the end goal, it's useless. Act Sci, Stats and Econ kids now learn to code in R and Python to do their work better/faster.
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Jan 29, 2010
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The easiest and common paths to $100k are accounting and engineering. Actuarial science, lawyers and doctors are harder paths, but better paths.

Statistics, general math, finance and economics are paths that may or may not lead to a high paying jobs. I know more people studying these that end up in low paying jobs than high paying jobs.
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Apr 21, 2004
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StatsGuy wrote: Lots of need for math grads, stats and actuarial science, who do you think work the data, machine learning, Ai jobs? Not developers
These code packages are not readily available for deployment?

Every math calculation has to be done from scratch?

How has machine learning and AI made companies a lot of money? These are in their infancy most likely. I think I read banks use it for their automated system responses and customer recognition but that's likely just the beginning. Didn't microsoft shut down one of its AI project because it was going haywire?
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Oct 6, 2015
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Anyone considering STEM training of any kind needs to read this report; I already see some complete myths being propagated in this thread:

https://www.ospe.on.ca/public/documents ... market.pdf

The data is not just applicable to engineers alone. And engineering is not a slam-dunk $100k by any means. 2 out of 3 university-trained and qualified engineers are not able to find field-relevant positions in Canada (and that's after completing engineering programs that often themselves reject large numbers of students for being unqualified!). Math/CompSci is only slightly better, at ~50% field relevant employment rates. Accounting is almost as bad as engineering at 43% field-relevant employment.
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Jan 9, 2012
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Brampton
Management consulting is very competitive to break into, but if you can make it, you can also break into the 100K salary range.
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Jan 12, 2011
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Toronto
StatsGuy wrote: Lots of need for math grads, stats and actuarial science, who do you think work the data, machine learning, Ai jobs? Not developers
What? Are we talking about real ml jobs here?

Take a look at deep mind job postings for example. The majority of them require cs degrees or at least experience.

https://deepmind.com/careers/

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