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Pilvi Torsti, wearing a yellow satin top and grey slacks, smiling and leaning against the terracotta-coloured faced of a colonnade-ripple building

OPINION PIECE - Top marks: why Quebec’s college-based innovation is a model for Europe

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Pilvi Torsti, Director of the European Training Foundation (ETF)

Elina Pylkkänen, Permanent State Under-Secretary, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment of Finland

Finland often appears in international rankings as a model of educational excellence, but even the best systems must adapt to meet economic and technological change. Today, Finland faces the same strategic and structural problem confronting Europe as a whole. Vocational institutions (or “universities of applied sciences”) are not evolving fast enough to meet the needs of citizens, industry, SMEs and regional economies.

Enrolment in technical fields is declining, teachers are challenged by new technologies, and SMEs – the backbone of most developed economies – struggle to access the support they need to innovate quickly and affordably.

Across the European Union, skills must better align with real labour market demands, and reforms are urgently needed. Among others, they would help Europe unlock its business potential and boost competitiveness. This is where Quebec’s College Centres for Technology Transfer (CTTC) offer a compelling example.

With support from the EU’s MOSAIC initiative (a project that assesses how vocational education can better serve small businesses), Finland organised a fact-finding mission to Quebec in 2025. The mission actively sought a model for change, and CTTCs – an integral part of Quebec’s “cégep” vocational colleges – provided an appealing blueprint.

The resulting report, published this month, largely praised CTTCs’ approach to applied innovation. Though sometimes presented as under-resourced and underfunded at home, the Quebec model effectively bridges education and industry by directly involving students and teachers to help companies prototype, test, innovate, and solve technical problems.

A standout example is Inovem, an applied-research and innovation intermediary for the timber industry, based in Victoriaville. As is true of other high-performing CTTCs, Inovem exemplifies structural integration within local industry: teachers acquire new competencies by participating in real-world projects, students learn by contributing to them, and companies gain practical research capacity and access to human capital.

This is precisely the kind of system that Europe needs to emulate. Across the EU, cooperation between education and industry often remains too dependent on temporary, project-based funding cycles. Projects launch, reports are published, and conclusions are drawn – before the system resets. And yet, the path forward is clear.

The European Training Foundation (ETF), an EU agency that supports almost 30 neighbouring countries reform their education and labour markets, has identified a pattern when it comes to enacting structural change. Countries succeed when vocational colleges enjoy three key elements: a permanent mandate to support applied innovation, stable funding linked to real economic demand, and governance that binds education, industry and government together.

Recent Finnish regional consultations, which engaged timber-industry representatives in the Lahti region, revealed a commonly held viewpoint among local SMEs. Companies feel they would greatly benefit from directly testing ideas and collaborating with teachers and students.

With this as a starting point, the country has launched several pilot centres based on the Quebec experience, starting with the Centria University of Applied Sciences in Kokkola. Results so far have been promising, with the potential to serve as a basis for Europe to pursue broader reforms that turn vocational colleges into genuine engines of new industrial policy and company clusters as well as regional resilience.

Analysing skills ecosystems beyond our borders and emulating others’ experiences is not only good practice; the prospect of a major skills gap demands it. The EU and surrounding countries each have their own system and unique approaches to education and training, with a wealth of diverse models to tap into – but benchmarking further afield offers us even more opportunities to improve. Through international peer-learning initiatives of mutual benefit, education can drive much-needed innovation.

Both Canada and Europe share a belief in the power of strong public institutions and democratic principles. In a world marked by ever-intensifying geopolitical instability and technological disruption, our societies face similar challenges. Against this backdrop, we must continue to adapt to ensure that people and companies can still prosper and thrive.

Ultimately, Quebec’s unique vocational system has shown us that when colleges are empowered to act, regional industries stand to gain a welcome boost. By supporting this, democratic economies have a better chance to remain competitive and creative, while safeguarding the social values they hold dear.

Inspired by Canada, Finland has begun this journey. Europe must embark on it too.

This op-ed was originally published in French-language daily La Presse (Canada) on 25 June 2026.

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