15 of the 30 graduates from the 1957 Steinbach Collegiate Institute class gathered together for a class reunion at the Mennonite Heritage Village on Friday.

Ernie Peters says five of the 30 graduates have passed away and some were not able to make the reunion due to illness. Peters notes there were three couples from the class who were married and are still married to this day, including him and his wife.

He adds a lot has changed for students today compared to 60 years ago.

"You just can't compare it because of all the electronics that have come. We had to do everything long-hand with a pencil and paper, a pen if you could afford it. We had absolutely no adding machines or anything, so there was a lot of testing of memory."

Peters says they were reminiscing about what everyone had gone on to become including a lawyer, university professor, teacher, nurse, and Jake Epp, who became a member of parliament.

Epp says the Steinbach Collegiate Institute is now the Steinbach Arts Centre, nicknamed the paper box because of it's thin walls. He notes it was an interesting time where it was common for teachers to have completed their degrees during the evening and in the summers, he adds his class was probably one of the first to attend university full-time for their education degrees.

He says 60 years ago people could leave school after Grade 11 and still get a good middle-class job, adding things are much more competitive today.

"I was in Iraq, we were looking at building a pipeline and I saw kids going to school who had no computers. You say, okay, our kids don't have to compete with these kids. These kids were carrying a cardboard piece of paper on which they had written a keyboard and they were practicing computer skills on a keyboard, that's competitive. I mean, those kids wanted to learn."

He adds his granddaughter is in university and he can see another example of how competitive the job market has become.

"It's brought it all back home in the sense of how competitive university has become. The marks you have to achieve to even be considered for acceptance into university, and then what jobs are available post-university. Those jobs today are much more in the technical field. If you take a look at youth unemployment, you see a lot of university grads taking jobs that are not menial but they are not in-line with the training many of them have gotten."

Epp says that's different from when he graduated, noting 60 years ago people didn't question whether or not they would have a job, the question was what field they wanted to get a job in. He adds advice for students in school is to get good marks, study hard, and prepare for the future because those things are much more important these days than 60 years ago.