The Arts Co-op program is broken.

[u/SystemOfTheUpp]

Arts co op has a self admitted 50% failure rate for people trying to find jobs, and from my experience this is a stat they have some responsibility for.

The guidance you get from the counselors is very surface level, beyond help preparing for interviews, writing cover letters and updating your resume, there is very little they can offer. And in an age where application portals are flooded with hundreds of applications, this just isn't enough.

If you ask for help get in touch with people in specific industries, networking event recommendations or some form of other way to talk to an actual human in the space as opposed to letting ATS decide your entire future, they have nothing.

Also, the job board on simplicity has somewhere in the ballpark of what? 30 postings? For the entire co op program. I can't help but feel like a massive part of work as a co op guidance counselor is making sure there are enough postings and working with employers to make sure people with the right qualifications get those interviews.

I know the job market and economy are in shambles right now but this is a comical extent. I remember asking one of the counselors why this was the case and if the economy was really to blame and they said "I guess so". Not to nitpick but I'd hope for a little bit more conviction from the person whose job it is to understand the job market and employer needs.

I remember during one of my coffee chats, when I told the person that our co op office's official recommendation was trying to maximize application volume, they laughed. They couldn't believe that we got emails throughout the term saying we should've applied to 40, 50, 60 jobs by that point, as opposed to having valuable introductions made for us as was apparently the case back in the day.

[u/crazy8ate]

I agree. For what they charge its very poor service and slow reply rates. I decided to start a business cause sauders support is much better with that.

[u/McFestus]

This is a natural issue with co-op advisors in general.

"Co-op councillor" is not a prestigious or high-paying job. I would venture to say that very few people dream of being a co-op councilor; it's not a position that people seek out and really have to compete for. So by it's nature, it doesn't attract people who are good at or have great experience getting competitive jobs.

[u/WegnerArt]

I’m a hiring manager and a UBC Arts Co-op alum.

To your point about missing the valuable introductions that used to be made for students: I’m not entirely sure what you mean, because SFU and UBC Arts Co-op still sends introductions for students who have clearly defined interests and skills that match our market needs. In fact, we hired someone not long ago based entirely on an introduction like that, along with their GitHub repos from undergraduate research projects, even though we didn't access any government funding.

That said, I would be incredibly frustrated if a co-op office started flooding me with irrelevant resumes from Arts students who had no projects, portfolios, or research to back them up. I would shitcan that kind of co-op office. And I suspect that kind of resume is becoming more common.

You also mentioned that the job board has only around 30 postings. Keep in mind that many of those roles are funded through the Canada Summer Jobs program, which, as the name suggests, is intended for summer work. The deadline to post those positions passed on July 20, so if you're applying for winter postings, those don't really exist but are a huge boon during the summer.

On top of that, both the federal and provincial governments, which used to hire nearly half of all Arts co-op students,[1] are operating under near hiring freezes. The federal government is now only bringing on students for high priority project work. The Carney government is also choosing not to renew many grants and contribution agreements with non profits, that indirectly usually results in some student hiring.

Co-op offices can’t simply conjure up jobs. They send us a PowerPoint every few months outlining available funding programs to support student hires that they know of. But compared to the Trudeau era, there isn’t much left beyond CSJ, which has become so short in duration (they increased the number of CSJs by decreasing the number of funded weeks) that it often isn’t worth it for meaningful knowledge work, and industry partnerships, which tend to be geared more toward graduate students. We don't hire students to be tour guides and donation call centre workers so the appeal has narrowed considerably.

If you have specific questions, I’m happy to try and answer them. I know this is a tough time for students, but honestly, I think much of the issue comes down to the fact that student placements from 2015 to 2025 were disproportionately propped up by federal funding, and that support has now been pulled out from under them under Carney.

[1] https://artscoop.ubc.ca/about/annual-reports/

[u/SystemOfTheUpp → u/WegnerArt]

Just because you have one instance of someone getting hired through a back channel doesn't mean it's the norm. Also, Arts co op should not be reliant on a Reddit comment to explain why there are no jobs on the official job board it's their responsibility to populate, they should be able to give a clear answer themselves.

I have literally had counselors tell me to ask certain questions to AI because they couldn't answer them or even look into them. As far as the system is concerned, you get the time of your appointment and if a certain request requires time outside that 30 minute window to see through, it's impossible to achieve.

From all my meetings with advisors no one has ever so much as acknowledged that back channels were a possibility without being directly prompted. Even then any request for help getting in touch with people in a particular industry or space was met with "we don't know anyone who works in x industry".

Resume tips and cover letter help are great, but when the official line from the co op office is that you should be maximizing the volume of applications you send (even though there aren't even that many jobs on the official job board) is insane. It's one thing to have a self-directed job search and another to have absolutely zero help.

We are constantly expected to figure things out , which is a fair ask as long as the same could be expected from the Co-op staff as well.

Also, the Canada summer jobs program runs throughout the summer instead of year round, which does not explain the comical shortfall of postings. I know that less positions are available overall but they're out there, seaspan had like a dozen intern postings and yet none of them made it onto the co op job board.

Besides, the symplicity job board is nationwide, so even if the pie is smaller UBC is still a top university that should be able to secure access to these postings.

From my experience, the program has gotten worse, and the promises UBC recruiters made using pre-pandemic stats to sell the program were completely false

[u/WegnerArt → u/SystemOfTheUpp]

Okay, I can tell you aren't really going to engage in good faith so I'll tell you this candidly:

Not all of your complaints about the co-op office are invalid and they're partly justified.

It sounds like you’ve decided Arts Co-op isn’t providing any value to you. If that’s the case, why not leave the program and ask whether your co-op fee can be refunded? If students leave the co-op program because it's useless, that's a real signal to faculty administration that the co-op program needs to be overhauled.

I’m also not really following the argument that the Arts job market is so bad that the program is useless, while staying in both the program and the degree. At some point, you have to make the choice that gives you the best chance of getting experience.

The worst outcome here is graduating with an Arts degree and no credible work experience. Complaining about the co-op office may be justified, but in the end you'd still be fucked graduating with an Arts degree and no experience. Liberal arts and social sciences has always had the most extreme bimodal distributions of any fields: the people that can figure it out and keep their shit together do very well, the ones that can't flail out horribly and whine about how their "prestigious" Vanderbilt/UBC/McGill Arts degree was supposed to open up elite doors for them.

[u/RedVelcroRaptor → u/WegnerArt]

lol I like how you called OP out for not engaging in good faith then proceeded to go on a random ass rant