posted
Oh, and I was assuming minimum wage (before the rate hike this July), and of course many people working during school work fifteen hours a week rather than ten hours. If a person was averaging $8/hour (typical in many school jobs, not that hard to get outside of school) and working fifteen hours during school, that would bring the total to $4480 for the summer and $3960 during the school year. That's tuition plus a good chunk of living expenses at most state schools.
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quote:knowing the CCs will take them without a HS diploma
Whoa, really? Pretty sure you have to graduate here.
quote:the person who goes to college so cheaply still has a burden of additional costs to pay, it is just paid in taxes instead of loan payments
This is sort of my point from the very beginning. Loan payments are extremely localized, heavy taxes upon entry into the workforce. To me, that seems cold. If everyone in the country is contributing slowly to cheaper education, it spreads out the burden. The burden is still there, of course, but it's easier to carry if everyone helps a little. I pay taxes now so other people can go to university or college-- and I'm glad to.
quote:And I'm a bit bemused at the idea I see in Teshi's recent posts that students having to seek out and work for scholarships if they want to have more of their education paid for is a bad thing.
Different approaches to education, I guess. Public school is free, university is like running a marathon. Seems a little weird.
I don't think university education should be free, but I think it should be acceptably affordable without having to pimp out your essays.
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quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Oh, and I was assuming minimum wage (before the rate hike this July), and of course many people working during school work fifteen hours a week rather than ten hours. If a person was averaging $8/hour (typical in many school jobs, not that hard to get outside of school) and working fifteen hours during school, that would bring the total to $4480 for the summer and $3960 during the school year. That's tuition plus a good chunk of living expenses at most state schools.
Seriously? If the $6500 annual average of tuition and fees is accurate, that's less than $2000 a year left over. And let's not forget textbooks--estimated at around $1000 annually, last I checked, even taking into account that most students shop used.
You think less than $1000 is a "good chunk" of rent, food, and bus fares?
posted
Right - $1000 will in no way pay for rent, food, and living expenses for an entire year.
Fifteen hours is a lot of time for a full-time student, and that's assuming they can get a job for $8 an hour but only work so few hours. Maybe in a city, but not in a tiny college town where there is an oversupply of poor 18-year-olds.
Then again, if they are in a city, $1000 is DEFINITELY not going to put more than a tiny dent in the cost of room and board for the entire year.
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quote:Right - $1000 will in no way pay for rent, food, and living expenses for an entire year.
Of course, and I didn't say it would. I said it would cover a good chunk. Even in many cities, that can easily be two or three months of rent for a college student living with other college students.
Not to mention that if we want to bring full cost of living into it, Teshi's assertion is quite false for universities in cities in Canada (edit: heck, most universities; I can't find one decent university in Canada that doesn't have cost of attendance over $10k), especially the best ones (such as the University of Toronto). The tuition and fees schedule can be covered, certainly, but the estimated cost of attending for someone not living at home is much higher.
quote: Canadian citizens and permanent residents living away from home can anticipate costs in the $16,000 to $17,500 range.
In fact, since cost of living in the US is pretty comparable to cost of living in Canada for the most part, this means the only difference between typical Canadian cost of attendance and typical state school cost of attendance is about two thousand dollars (UoT charges nearly $5k for typical undergraduates in the coming year, and nearly $8k for some majors, like computer science: http://www.provost.utoronto.ca/link/students/fees10/dom_csc.html ).
Heck, that means it is cheaper to go to several of the better schools in the US for computer science than it is to go to UoT. For instance, the University of Washington (#6 in the US) charges under $7k for residents. And then there are fields like Engineering, where UoT will be charging just over $9k per year for entering undergraduates.
posted
I haven't been following the debate, I just happened to pop into the thread and saw your 11:19 post, fugu. Couple of comments.
Cost of living in Toronto is a lot higher than the cost of living in the locations of other Canadian universities. I don't think Toronto the most expensive place in Canada, but it's higher even than some other large Canadian cities. It's certainly much more expensive to attend U of T than it is to attend -- say -- Queen's, Dalhousie, or another well-regarded Canadian university that isn't in a city of 2-4 million people.
It costs quite a lot more than going to my own alma mater. And, of course, the CS and engineering programs at Waterloo are way better than those of U of T.
Incidentally, $7k US is currently roughly equal to $9k CDN. The Canadian dollar dropped back to a more realistic and sustainable $0.80 US last fall.
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posted
Ah, true, mustn't forget exchange rates. In that case, it is currently more like four to six thousand dollars more a year in up-front costs to attend many good state universities than to attend a good Canadian university such as your own. And if we factor in the amounts that are paid in taxes (on both sides, since state schools are subsidized in the US), I suspect that narrows some. We're still hardly in the realm of dealbreaker differences in amounts of debt.
I note that most of the savings at your alma mater have to do with cost of living, not tuition (which is also higher for CS students). Also, given your school's cost projections, it looks like most students still can't cover it all with just full time work in the summer and part time work in the school year.
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posted
The Norwegian model is probably unrealistic for the American population, but it might be interesting as a basis for comparison. If you graduate from high school doing the general/economic/admin line - and I do mean graduate, lowest passing grade is sufficient - you can almost certainly get into a university. (For the popular majors, the ones with more applicants than positions, you do need high grades; but there are many open majors, which will take any warm body. On the flip side, these tend to be the tough ones like physics and math; the reason they take any warm body is that the first couple of terms weed out the ones who can't do the work.) Once you get in, you can get loans from the state, no interest until you graduate, and part of the loan is converted to grant upon graduation unless you lived with your parents during your studies. The loan will cover a reasonably frugal student lifestyle, unless of course you blow it all on beer the first month, which I have seen people do. The year I graduated they changed the rules so the loan was paid out in monthly installments instead of one big chunk at the start of the term.
Anyway. The other side of this is that the universities are state-owned, and charge only a token tuition, around 60 dollars a semester when I was there. So the loans only have to cover living expenses and books. On the gripping hand, there are only five universities in Norway, about one per million people. Some private colleges as well, but they are more like trade schools.
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quote:Originally posted by fugu13: I note that most of the savings at your alma mater have to do with cost of living, not tuition (which is also higher for CS students). Also, given your school's cost projections, it looks like most students still can't cover it all with just full time work in the summer and part time work in the school year.
Note that all engineering degree programs at UW are co-op programs that alternate four-month school terms with four-month paid work term internships. Quite a number of other degree programs have co-op options or requirements as well. I believe this was UW's main innovation when it got started as an engineering school in the mid-20th century.
In any case, with only my tuition being covered (by my parents, not by scholarship), I was able to earn enough money on my work terms to live on in my school terms, and thereby graduate with no debt. I don't know what the average debt load of a UW engineering grad is, although I don't personally know anyone who accrued more than $10k.
In the aggregate, though, student debt is absolutely a problem here in Canada, and it's one reason that our left-of-centre New Democratic Party consistently pushes for increasing government funding for postsecondary education at both the provincial and federal levels.
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posted
Oh, I didn't mean cover it all, I meant that they can cover a lot of it, plus aid like OSAP, and graduate with non-crippling debt.
If U of T is comparable to a cheaper US university, consider this: it's considered one of the top universities in the world, generally speaking.
Let me actually go to my invoice, for a Bachelor of Arts:
I paid $452/half-year class, which roughly added up to $5,000, including other fees, for five classes. Residence, including food for the School Year, was also $5,000. So far that's $10,000. I see a couple hundred for books and supplies, depending on the courses and how second hand you are. That still doesn't approach $16,000.
If I work full time in a reasonably lucrative student employment job at say $13/h for eight hours a day, five days a week for three months, that's $6240 and more than $600/month 8-month rent taken care of.
I work part time (15 hrs, let's say-- two shifts a week) for eight months at my lower paying min. wage (9.50) job that's $4560 and I top $10,000.
This is before scholarships, in Toronto rent and paying Toronto B.A. fees.
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posted
rivka, your second link isn't working for me, for reasons I can't figure out. It looks like a good url when I mouse over it, but when I click it I get a server error as though it started with www.hatrack... instead of the url shown when I mouse over it. Any clue why?
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posted
"That's not what anyone said. Some students can get free rides (need-based, merit-based, or some combination thereof); most cannot. Doesn't make going to college a waste."
Yes, I know that's not what anyone said. I was asking, hence my use of a question mark.
I personally feel that tuition (plus the ridiculous cost-of-living in the US) have, together, gotten so far out of hand that it's just not smart to pay more than maybe 25% of your own tuition. I see not getting the great majority of your tuition paid (through scholarships/grants) as basically society saying "no, we don't need you working in that field."
Seriously, either find a field that people will pay for you to go to school in, or don't bother with school. I'm not sure I'd make many exceptions for that, except maybe some trade schools.
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quote:Since most students are only accepted by a handful of schools, it seems the relevant question is less "what is the cheapest school that provides a quality education?" than "which of the schools to which I've been admitted will provide the best education?"
It's a bit belated, but I need to say that I find this a specious argument. People only get accepted to a handful of schools because they only apply to a handful of schools. With few exceptions, private schools have more stringent admissions criteria than comparable public schools. I've never heard of a student who got admission to a good private College who could not have been accepted in to a top tier public school. The only possible exceptions might be "legacy" children who are guaranteed a spot in some private schools from birth regardless of their performance.
Cost should come into consideration when you are applying to schools and not just after you've been admitted.
[ May 01, 2009, 12:51 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
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