Canada would be better off if universities admitted 30 per cent fewer students every year and the college and polytechnical system got more of a focus, a report commissioned by the Canadian Council for Chief Executives says.

The report, written by Ken Coates, a professor at the School of Public Policy at the University of Saskatchewan, looks at the imbalances inherent in Canada's education system and concludes that neither students nor the economy are well-served by the status quo.

Coates says short-term thinking by schools and policy-makers is just as much to blame as a bias against so-called "blue collar" jobs by families and young people.

Put together, the result is that the current glut of ill-trained university graduates is being flooded into an economy that by and large has no use and no demand for them.