Conventional wisdom and high school guidance counselors state that you can't get a decent paying job unless you go to college or university. However, that attitude is outdated. The tables have turned and now many college grads find themselves waiting tables at Oakville banquet halls while trades people are in high demand and making good money. If you want a career in the trades, your best bet is to go to trade school. Here are some of your options regarding places to study in Saskatoon.
High School
If you know what you want to be before you graduate from high school, you can get a jump start on your trades education by taking the vocational rather than the academic stream in high school. Many vocational high schools have programs like carpentry, auto repair, restaurant management, and plumbing, so you have a good chance of getting apprenticed to a London, Ontario home builder straight out of high school if you go this route, and you'll start making money much earlier than your college bound friends.
Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology
The Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology is big - it's got four campuses and over 12,000 students. If you want to have a college experience while training in a trade, you can do that here. You can take a diploma program that can have you managing a restaurant, running a farm, or working with x-ray protection in a hospital, or you can take one of the thirty trade programs they offer where the end result is an apprenticeship and a certificate rather than a diploma.
Gabriel Dumont Institute/Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technology
Many people doing trades training do so because they want to move away and drive a GTA airport taxi or work in the Alberta oil fields, but if you're a local with First Nations status and you want to use your newfound skills to help boost the economic prosperity of your community, you will find other like minded students at these two schools. The Gabriel Dumont Institute is for people of the Metis nation and the Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technology is for everyone.
Career Colleges
There are some trades programs that you don't need to pay steep polytechnic school program tuitions to take. Some of them, like personal care worker, auto repair technician, medical transcriptionist and paralegal you can take through distance education from a school like MacTech or Home Ed. They'll send you your course work in custom printed packaging and a computer to do it on and you'll work with an advisor at your own pace. This is ideal if you want to train for a trade while you're already working.
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