UW among world’s best for getting a job
Report highlights school’s student-employer connections, employment rate, employer partnerships
WATERLOO — The University of Waterloo still excels at the mission baked into its genes 60 years ago; preparing students to succeed in jobs.
A leading education agency ranks the school 24th in the world for “nurturing graduate employability.” This puts UW in the top five per cent of 500 universities ranked, second in Canada behind the University of Toronto.
“I know that through UW a lot of people have been able to gain really good jobs, just because UW is renowned for the people that graduate from it,” said Krys Kazik, 21, who is taking legal studies and Russian.
“They are constantly hosting career fairs and having people come talk about employability here. It kind of makes it feel like they’re going to be with you every step of the way, even after you graduate,” said Amy Kelly, 22. She’s studying English partly because she figures a UW degree will help her get a job.
UW didn’t achieve this by accident. In
1957 it was an upstart school in a mostly vacant field founded on the vision of business leaders. With its first 74 students, it launched a co-operative technical education in which students would gain experience during work-study terms.
Employers were expected to help educate students. The school listed participating companies in its academic calendar, a scholarly heresy at the time.
“They were clearly thinking about employability,” said retired history professor Ken McLaughlin, a UW graduate and author of three books about UW. “The Waterloo philosophy seemed to strike a wonderfully rich note among leading Canadian companies almost from the very day it started.”
But UW’s founding plan was about more than just getting jobs for students. The school aimed to help students succeed in their work.
McLaughlin recalls that UW made certain courses compulsory for its earliest history students because graduates could earn higher salaries if they became teachers.
“It was visionary. It was practical. There was a lot of foresight,” said Tony LaMantia, president of the Waterloo Economic Development Corporation.
LaMantia graduated from UW after completing work terms in arts and business. He went on to hire UW students for work terms in private industry and government.
“By and large they were the most assignment-ready, project-ready, talented individuals, who you could throw to any task,” he said. Now he pitches UW’s success around the world to help develop business at home. But that’s not how it all started 60 years ago.
Critics scoffed when UW was founded. U of T’s engineering dean dismissed workstudy terms as disruptive, predicted cooperative education would fail, and declared it would never be the role of a university to get jobs for students. Proper students should get their own jobs.
“Other universities looked down on it,” McLaughlin said. “U of T had a kind of arrogance about its place in the community and Waterloo did not.”
UW and U of T have grown into fierce rivals in technical education. To compete, UW had to develop world-class research to complement its student work experience. It now has 35,500 students.
Work experience and research is why UW graduates become entrepreneurs and leaders, said Murray Gamble, a recent UW governor who helps direct the local economic development agency. “It’s the combination that is really, really effective,” said Gamble, president of Breslau-based C3 Group.
Education agency QS measured five factors to assess graduate employability in rankings it released Monday: a school’s reputation among employers, high-achieving alumni, employer partnerships, employer-student connections, and the employment rate among graduates.
U of T edges out UW due to higher-achieving alumni and a stronger reputation among employers, the methodology reveals. UW scores higher than U of T for student-employer connections, a better employment rate among graduates, and better partnerships with employers.
“I am really pleased that our graduates are highly employable,” UW president Feridun Hamdullahpur said.
“It is one of our foundational principles that we integrate work with their studies,” he said.
“Right from the beginning, we wanted to be a different type of university. While we are very much dedicated and committed to excellence, at the same time we are wellconnected with the world.”
Rankings include 18 Canadian universities but not Wilfrid Laurier University, which is typically excluded from international rankings.
The rankings show the U.S. is home to the world’s top three universities for preparing students for jobs; Stanford University, University of California at Los Angeles, and Harvard University.