NAICS 611510Canadian industry · 6-digitlocal market1 market record

Technical and trade schools

SoftwareCourse Creation & Certification Platforms 6115

This Canadian industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in providing vocational and technical training in a variety of technical subjects and trades. The training often leads to non-academic certification. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 872
Under 10 employeesA: 64%

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–435841%

5–919723%

10–1913716%

20–4911013%

50–99435%

100–199212%

200–49961%

500+0—

Of 872 Canadian establishments with employees, 64% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.

Where they areA

Ontario30235%

British Columbia18621%

Quebec16619%

Alberta10312%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA

Educational Services, US · opened 2020

83.5%

1 year

70.3%

3 years

58.2%

5 years

43.1%

10 years

opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

No US figure is shown. County Business Patterns is coded to the 2017 US edition of NAICS; this code either does not exist there, names a different industry, or is outside the programme's coverage (most of agriculture, rail, postal and public administration are). A figure is attached only where both the code and the title agree.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 611, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

local competitionmedium capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 611 Educational services

Public education is not a market. Private career colleges, tutoring and skills instruction are, with accreditation and student-loan eligibility as the real barriers.

Who sets the price: Public funding for the core system; the operator for private and vocational training.
The software it runs on: Student information and learning management systems; booking and billing for private instruction.

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Operating businessScreened

Private Trade School OperationOne thing must be true

binding constraint: entry cost + regulatory drag

Provincial career-training regulators set the approval, the tuition-protection bonding and the outcome reporting, and student visa policy has repeatedly reset international enrolment — the revenue line most private colleges were built on — with little notice. Approval precedes enrolment by a year or more. The course-delivery software above this code is screened separately at 6115.

NAICS 6115105 vendors named10 sourced figuresOpen →

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

Sold across the wider branch

Vertical softwareScreenedfiled at 6115 Technical and trade schools

Course Creation & Certification PlatformsOne thing must be true

binding constraint: growth quality

Incumbent Kajabi and Thinkific (Canadian — Vancouver)

Seat growth is real and revenue retention is not — the buyer is a solo creator whose business fails at a high rate, so gross adds are consumed by churn of the customer's business rather than of the product. Moodle sets a zero price floor for institutions and Kajabi and Thinkific have already taken the prosumer tier. Sourced update: the only public comparable in this category, Thinkific, turns over $73.2M with ARR of $61M growing 5%. That is the size of the prize for a listed leader — the ceiling is now a sourced figure rather than an assertion.

NAICS 61154 vendors named3 sourced figuresOpen →

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Companies in this industry · 4

Every company this research names that is filed here or beneath — the operators, and the vendors that sell to them — largest disclosed revenue first. The rank is within the company’s own six-digit industry.

Company	Filed under	Revenue	Rank
Universal Technical InstituteNYSE:UTI	Technical and trade schools611510	$836M	1/4
CDI College, Herzing, triOSPrivate	Technical and trade schools611510	—	2/4
Eastern, Academy of LearningPrivate	Technical and trade schools611510	—	3/4
Lincoln TechNASDAQ:LINC	Technical and trade schools611510	—	4/4

Who works here

The occupations employed in Educational services, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Secondary, elementary and kindergarten school teachers One industry 99.3%

Student monitors, crossing guards and related occupations One industry 98.7%

Managers in education One industry 96.9%

Assisting occupations in education One industry 95.6%

University professors and post-secondary assistants One industry 94.9%

College and other vocational instructors One industry 72.4%

Educational and employment counsellors Mostly one sector 65%

Technical occupations in libraries and public archives Mostly one sector 56.3%

Athletes, coaches, referees and related occupations Mostly one sector 30.8%

Program leaders and instructors in recreation, sport and fitness Mostly one sector 20.4%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Office administrative assistants - general, legal and medical Across the economy 11.6%

Administrative, property and payroll officers Across the economy 8.8%

Technical occupations in computer and information systems Across the economy 7.6%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 5.2%

Other technical trades Across the economy 4.4%

Building maintenance installers, servicers and repairers Across the economy 4.3%

Survey, statistical and data entry occupations Across the economy 3%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 2.9%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 2.5%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 2.4%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. In a small establishment several of these are usually one person, or an outside provider.

All 162 occupations →