Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
My name is Herb O'Heron. I'm the director of research and policy analysis at the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada. I'm jointed today by Greg Fergus. He's the director of public affairs at AUCC.
I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to speak here today. I will skip through some of the material that repeats a little of what my colleagues have said. I think it's really important that we do share information on trends in employment and in enrolment across our institutions. For many years AUCC—and what has been part of my role at AUCC—has been producing that kind of information and, through websites, has been making it very public for guidance counsellors.
I've put a series of brochures on the table at the back. There is a data clip for you that has all of this kind of information. The data clip contains the publication we produce, on a triennial basis, that shows trends and includes very detailed labour market and enrolment information for universities. We have been doing all we can to make sure that students, parents, and all Canadians have access to reliable information on enrolment trends across Canada, labour market trends, and employment characteristics of our graduates.
It is also very important, as Nobina has noted, to recognize that we already have the world's highest participation rate. In fact, the community college system in Canada is the largest post-secondary system in the world—far larger than that of many other countries. It's much larger in Canada, in proportional terms, than it is in the U.S. It is the university sector that is much smaller, perhaps in contradiction with how we hear that everybody should go to university.
In fact, when I look at the data trends for the number of people who have completed university and college degrees, about 30% of our population aged 25 to 34 have a university degree; about 37% of the population aged 24 to 35 have a college or a trade degree; about 25% of Canadians aged 25 to 34 have only a high-school diploma; and 7% have not completed high school. So there is a lot more room to grow.
We already have a lot of graduates. Jim was at a meeting last week in Vancouver, where we had a very formal discussion among presidents of universities and colleges about ways in which we can create better pathways, easier pathways, more flexible pathways, and streamlined pathways for university and college graduates and students to move between institutions so that we can meet the needs of the economy.
Why have we seen the kind of growth we have seen across our enrolment trends, whether it's for universities or colleges? In fact, there are more apprentices in Canada now. The number has doubled in the last decade. The number of college students has never been higher, and there has been a 50% growth in enrolment demand.
Those trends exist because of signals coming from our employers. There is a great deal of enrolment growth and a great deal of change taking place across Canada. As you look at these trends, you'll see a decline in the number of people who have high school or less employed in our economy. There has been some growth in the number of people with trade certificates—it's about 31%. The number of people employed who have university or college degrees has doubled since 1990.
Those are the signals that are going out to students and families about where the jobs are, where employment growth is, and where they and their children should go when they are looking at the kinds of education that are in demand in our economy.
The next slide really points to the types of jobs that are out there. These are professional and management occupations, and this shows the kind of growth that's taken place in those jobs for university and college graduates over the last 20 years. There have been 1.4 million new jobs for university graduates in professional and management occupations. There are another 600,000 administrative and technical support jobs for university graduates.
When we look at the changes in employment growth for college graduates, we see with the doubling of the number of jobs all kinds of job growth for college graduates in the areas of technical and clerical support, trades, and manufacturing occupations. There is huge growth.
What we see in other occupations is a tremendous decline in the proportion and the number of jobs for those who have high school or less. Those people are leaving the labour market. They're aging their way out of the labour market and being replaced by a cadre of graduates, and highly educated and skilled graduates, both from universities and from colleges.
We know these are good jobs. We know these are good jobs because the income levels of the graduates continue to rise. When we look at the income levels of—