Episode #86: "AI Can't Cut Hair: Human Connection and the Trades That Will Always Matter" with Cheryl Harrison

What happens when a 35-year career in beauty education meets a country that still doesn't fully understand what skilled trades look like? Cheryl Harrison, Chief Operating Officer and Vice President of MC College, has spent over three decades answering that question — one student at a time.

In this episode of the EdUp Canada Podcast, host Michael Sangster sits down with Cheryl for a wide-ranging conversation about the real scope of skilled trades in Canada, the private investment that builds world-class campuses without government funding, and the quiet crisis hiding in plain sight: a generation of young Canadians who have never learned to talk to a stranger.

Cheryl shares the story of a Fort McMurray student told she wasn't smart enough — who crossed a graduation stage with a pair of shears from her father. She unpacks the four-year battle to change a student aid policy that held back career college students in Alberta. And she shares the single question her mentor gave her decades ago that she still uses to navigate the hardest situations in leadership: "Do you want to be right, or do you want to be effective?"

This is a conversation about what career college education actually delivers — and why it matters more than most Canadians realize.

What to expect

[00:03]  Hairstyling Is a Red Seal Trade — and Most People Don't Know It

[00:04]  Why AI Will Never Replace a Hairstylist

[00:05]  "Doctor, Dentist, Hairdresser" — The New City Checklist

[00:09]  Why Students Choose Post-Secondary Even When Apprenticeships Exist

[00:13]  Teaching Gen Z to Talk to Strangers

[00:17]  The Mentor Who Built a 35-Year Career

[00:18]  "Do You Want to Be Right, or Do You Want to Be Effective?"

[00:24]  The Student She Has Never Forgotten

Full transcript: https://share.descript.com/view/aC4Fv81sqmx ⁠

⁠Listen to past episodes here:www.edupcanada.ca‍ ‍