Maybe it's because I'm studying in an industry that is resilient to the economy (building engineering), but I haven't had any problems finding a job- I have competing offers that I need to sort out for when I graduate.

There is no mystery here.

There are simply far too many Canadian young people studying for general degrees at universities when the majority of job openings require specific career training, often with a heavy math/science emphasis.

Other careers in in technology or the trades can be learned at a college or through an apprenticeship. Not enough young people even consider these opportunities even though there are severe shortages for specific skills in many areas.

This article is dead on. I experienced pretty much all of what is described in the above article even ended up studying on scholarship at the London School of Economics (this despite not being able to find a job in Canada with not one but two prestigious Canadian degrees).
I disagree with the other posters that this is all down to too many students studying arts and science. While I agree that more young people should consider careers in the trades, there is a genuine wealth of talent in arts and science programs.
Part of the problem as I've experienced it seems to relate to region specific practices and, unfortunately, a bad economy. Where I was completely unable to get a reasonable job in Toronto, as soon as I came to Alberta the situation changed. I put this down partly to employers having a different attitude in Alberta and partly to a better economic outlook at the moment.
It is not self-centered or greedy for us to want to have a good job after graduating - we ARE the brightest and best coming out of the top schools in the country. The retirement of the baby boomers is a serious issue that we're all going to have a face as a country very soon and that vast majority of employers who have failed to bring in young people and give them real jobs are going to suffer when there is a sudden lack of leadership and they need to fill a large number of positions with disenchanted 30 somethings who have been under-employed for a decade.
I don't think the solution, however, is to entirely adopt the recruitment procedures used in the UK, their incessant rounds of interviews and "testing" is overkill and never made much sense to me.

I think it's a matter of blending both opinions above.

I think we can all agree that Canadian universities have too many arts students (not I exclude sciences from here). How many psychologists do we really need you know? But, in a booming market anywhere, employers will hire anyone with decent educating when they need to fill in positions. An example is a computer programmer I worker with who was hired in the tech boom. His degree, psychology; the employer just needed people to do work.

Now that we are in times of troubling economy, I think it's much more important for students entering post-secondary education to take a good hard look at the job prospects and utility of thier studies. That is why I support many more students heading to college/trade/technical schools as these positions tend to be in higher demand regardless of the stauts of the economy (also the stigma against college in high school needs to end). More specific training is more appealing to employers then a B.A in History (unless it's a museum I guess). As the job market becomes more competitive, having a 'general degree' from university becomes increasingly less valuable as there are people in the job market matching the skills required by employers.

Been There, although university graduates may be the 'best an brightest' (I disagree but that's for another time) in their degree/major, they have to realize the value of their degree in public employment or private industry. I think it is a little greedy for some students to think that since they have a B.A they should be in high demand. A simple look-up on Monster/Workopolis will blow this notion out of the water.

I disagree that the Brits have it right. I have 3 Canadian degrees and one from the UK, and still live outside Manchester. A year spent in London before the current economic crisis is not a representative experience.

It is very competitive in the UK to get a job - at least outside of the London hub. There is high unemployment at the moment, and literally hundreds, if not thousands, of applicants for just about every job, something that a small populace like Canada would never face to the same degree. And as a result, it's not just graduates who are being seriously under-employed. The English are also extremely classist and snobbish about where one studied to an extent I never saw in Canada.

I applaud you for trying to tackle these issues, but I haven't seen an ideal model anywhere in the world...yet.

I'm a Canadian who received her Masters degree in England and i too found there is a better transition from university grad to career in the UK. There are many great fast track graduate training positions that within a year train you for a specific position. However, i found that the typical grad in the UK rarely enters a career related to their degree. For example, i know a number of people with degrees in psychology and they are working in IT, Finance, and the construction industry. My sister in law has a degree in ecology and worked in finance. To me this tells the tale that a degree is step one, and the rest of your career training will happen on the job. where as i think the difficult in Canada is that employers expect you to have this training when you apply for the position. I think there are lessons to be learned from the UK that can strongly benefit out graduates.

One way that might fix the system is to change the way universities are funded. Taxpayer money should only be subsidizing training for skills that are in short supply. There's a reason that business and engineering grads are best-positioned for employment.

Where schools receive public funding, we should make them lower the tuition for courses related to in-demand skills, and raise the price on the more useless ones (art history, religion come to mind). That's great if a student wants to learn these things out of personal interest; they should just do it on their own dime.

Sanjay's right, raise the price on "useless" classes like history, then only rich people will get to study it while the poor kids who could only afford welding classes carry the nation on their backs. Then, when the art kids are unemployed, weak and hungry, the tradespeople will stage a revolution.

I remember there was this thing some person said about history repeating if... if... ah I never took the class...

I agree with Sanjay; art history and religion are terribly useless in every conceivable way.

I'm a Canadian graduate with a degree in Applied Math and Computer Science from a top university and coop experience; I graduated 2 years ago and haven't been able to find anything in Canada.

The idea that graduates can't find jobs because they studied arts rather then math or science is completely false.
This article is exactly right - Canadian employers are WAY too narrow minded. Canadian companies don't want to spend a penny investing in their workforce - no wonder Canada has such pathetic productivity growth rates.

Even having coop experience is insufficient if the experience is not an EXACT fit for the job you're applying for (and coop experience rarely is an exact fit). I believe my education was a lot more serious then the sort of thing your typical BComm student goes through and yet Canadian companies will take a BComm graduate from a third rate school over a math/science graduate from a top school any day of the week.