It's so strange to see that tuition has increased >50% since I graduated from CS in 2007. Even if CS and Engineering charge different rates, I didn't expect that much of a difference or how much it outpaced inflation.
It's a shame Waterloo is falling into the US model of paying expensive tuition for fancy new buildings.
This isn't true for waterloo. (Bo was probably in 4 stream.) We only pay for the terms before we actually go onto co-op.
EDIT: As he points out below, it's different for different programs (even within engineering some pay 2 terms before their first term and some pay 1 term before. However the fees continue onwards for every term that the student is not in co-op).
When I went to U of T, my tuition started at around $1900, and ended at $2500/year in my final year, all of which was covered by my scholarship. In addition, residence at New College was about $6000/year including meal plan. So you could pay for your entire year's tuition, or a huge chunk of it, by working a minimum wage job (I think that was ~$6/hr at the time). If you lucked out and got a decent $9/hr job, then you were living on easy street.
My parents weren't rich enough to pay for more than the residence costs, so I needed to get a part time job in order to do anything outside of school. It was just enough so that I could go out every now and then or buy a CD. But I left school with zero debt.
The idea that kids today leave school with 6 figure debts is crazy to me. Being disadvantaged with such a huge debt load means they can't afford to take risks, which is something that young people should be able to do. It's at the point where it might not be worth it to pay for that top school education if it means becoming and indentured servant to your debt.
I agree, it's really unfair. I've had countless friends who ha d to stay local, since they couldn't afford dishing an additional $10k in living expenses elsewhere.
For those reading this and thinking that it's "not much cheaper than America" are missing a major point - student loans work differently there.
This article is about the University of Waterloo in Ontario. Ontario student loans are need-based, and each academic year any loan amount beyond $7,300 is forgiven.
The Ontario student loans program are pretty decent. Though, there's always that scenario where your family income is high, so your loan amount isn't forgiven.
I would say that a lot!
Median salary in Ontario is $49,088, before taxes, university expenses of 27kCAD are insane for me in that scale!
I literally paid zero euros for whole 5 years in university,
the only expenses I had were obviously housing (with roommates to save money), groceries, public transit (cheap with student card) and clothing.
>> Median salary in Ontario is $49,088, before taxes, university expenses of 27kCAD are insane for me in that scale!
What's also insane is that the average detached home in Toronto just hit over 1M last week (http://www.thestar.com/business/2015/07/07/toronto-average-h...). I live just north of Toronto near a highly desirable high school, and there are usually bidding wars on homes. A lot of houses sell over asking. Getting 100K over asking is not unheard of.
I bought my house 10 years ago (and thought I was overpaying back then), and I don't know how people can afford to buy a home these days in the GTA. In the decade that I bought my house, property values in my neighborhood have doubled and then some, and I'm pretty sure salaries have not.
A lot of young families live in my area, and I can't imagine how expensive tuition will be when their small children are ready for a post-secondary education. Juggling a gigantic mortgage and saving for your kids' education is incredibly tough these days.
In Vancouver median salary is $45~46k (lowest amongst the provinces), average detached home is $2.24 million (highest amongst the provinces), with no real sustainable economy of it's own, aside from old money, bunch of mining companies that go bust or don't really hire, lawyers, accountants, professionals that serve the old money, and real estate industry kept afloat by foreign investors and artificially suppressed supply (won't write new zoning rules since us peasants will ruin the international prestige by crowding the beautiful city that is in demand).
Tech scene here is meh, people would love to tell you Slack is a Vancouver company or it's a thriving hub but so far we only have Hootsuite (with a huge platform risk). Facebook is here to only hire foreigners as well as Microsoft, Amazon is the only one hiring locals (but work/life balance is just as worse as local shops) and a whole range of varying sweathshops/agencies/startups who can't recruit talent themselves (either due to penny pinching reputation or barely getting by with high employee turnover) rely on aggressive and rude recruiters who love to keep hourly wages down so they can make more money on that 3 month contract with false promises it will turn into a full time position (you get fired after they've done exploiting you). Rent is ok if you like sharing with a roommate but otherwise you are stuck with a high rent rate in a tiny space.
It's common to hear stories like some IT support guy pulling $50,000 year makes hefty monthly payment on his mortgage on a million dollar shack (real estate agents love the whole its-gonna-get-expensive-so-buy-now) because his parents told him that he needs to buy a house by using variable interest rate debt. Troubling fact is there's a lot of people doing this, our household debt ratio is much higher than those prior to the subprime mortgage crisis (people in denial saying "but there's no bubble in Vancouver, we are different.")
There's a lot of people that's going to be ruined when the bubble bursts and they suddenly can't make a payment or they are out of a job due to the impact it will have on Vancouver's economy.
The common complaint amongst recruiter is that they can't find senior engineers in Vancouver or they can't recruit any American engineers (I wonder why). Senior engineer, family man pulling $90,000/year (often told to take or leave it) would rather make more just south of the border with far lower living costs and able to actually negotiate a higher raise (instead of a couple thousand bucks if you work 50 hour weeks).
Even if you were doing alright the city has no life because people don't have disposable income like in other cities due to high living cost and strict code for venues shutting down after 1AM. People are isolated, friendly to tourists maybe but people are very cliquey, don't like to include the unfamiliar. People realize Vancouver actually kind of sucks and leaves and ridiculed for it with attitude from people who fake affluency like 'k thx bye we live in the best city in the world'. Hell, even people who grew up here are eager to leave if not already. The brain drain is accelerating and destroying intellectual capital (masters in finance becoming a carpenter because they studied for a job that doesn't exist). Sad because there's always a friend that is leaving Vancouver, and never coming back.
Some of us are determined to live here however and make it work but it also means that you must become an independent freelancer/consultant working for non local clients or starting a business (which actually is made pretty favorable in Vancouver) with a very cheap english speaking labor force in the same time zone as SV. The weak loonie also means American employers save additional 20%.
1) This is for one, 4 month term at university in Canada (uwaterloo specifically) for an engineering degree. Other degrees are lesser in cost (math is similar, which includes CS) A lot of the miscellaneous fees drop off in the second term (you only pay them once per year).
2) These are domestic fees, international fees are much higher (approx 3x) but still only around 1/3rd of the international US tuition.
3) This includes residence and food in it.
4) Co-op fees are paid for every term before you go on co-op, engineering typically has 6 terms before we graduate.
5) It is FAR cheaper to live off campus and cook.
6) It is still far cheaper than the US universities (even if you're in state)
EDIT: The image for the fees was for one 4 month term.
If it was possible certainly, however a lot of european universities especially in the Schengen region require the knowledge of a language other than english (whether German, Swiss etc.) for effective learning (a language which is probably not as common in a non-Schengen area).
Furthermore visa and citizenship requirements probably preclude the same for international students, however I'm not too well informed in that regard.
Higher education is not free in Germany. It may seem like "free" compared to the US and Canada, but there are still minor fees. Don't get me wrong, it's vastly cheaper to study in Germany than in other western countries.
There may be additional fees for some courses, such as 100€ for "study material" for distant learning courses. Public universities may also offer some courses that require you to pay, as the FH Köln does for their Master's program for Game Development. However, the vast majority of courses don't require such fees.
Of course, there are also private universities. Their fees are roughly €400-€700/month.
Does Germany offer free, higher education for international students? That seems like it would be a significant cost, assuming they don't cap the number of international students at a low number.
That's approximately my student loan amount for 4 years of school (started in September 2005 until my last exam in December 2009) with 4 courses per 4 month semesters (full load with volatile major changes so ended up taking whole range of stuff I was just interested in). I'm sure there's other costs like eating cheap food, long commute ,opportunity cost, and mental health cost.
International rates in Canada are more than domestic. When I was there c. 2007, it was about $5500 for domestic and $15000 for international. It was still less than most American schools of comparable standing, although sometimes more than State schools' in-state rate.
At the moment you'd also be getting something like a 20% discount for the dollar exchange rate.
hmmm maybe east coast Canada is different from west coast? Here we have primarily commuter schools where vast majority of students live at home and use subsidized public transport (so no campus culture, isolated student body unless you join a club), apart from the international students who commute in Lambo and Ferraris (I'm sure they have no problem paying 10x what a Canadian pays).
Living on campus first year was expensive but I don't think I ever spent more than a couple thousand bucks per semester with a 4 course as full load that lasts 4 months. Science courses were the cheapest based on my experience of switching majors many many times. Business courses were the most expensive and the easiest and had no substance. We had like one student union fee which wasn't much, food was cheap if you just ate instant food. Oh and I spent like 3.5~4 hours daily just commuting to campus and back for 3 years. I remember I did some math and I spent a few months of my life just on commuting. All that work to get a piece of paper that can't even be used as toilet paper because it's so rough or rolled to smoke herbs due to fact that it emits toxic fumes upon combustion from the ink which says I'm qualified for absolutely nothing.
How to tell a B.C.-raised person on the internet: They call Toronto or Waterloo "east coast" ;)
Waterloo is not a commuter school, a 45-minute one-way commute would be really bad. Schools outside the GTA are similar, few people decide to do stuff like live with parents in Chatham and drive to a school in London but it's not common. GTA schools will have longer commutes because it's bigger, rent close to schools tends to be expensive, and transport sucks.
But that's not unlike Metro Vancouver vs rest of B.C. really. I doubt many people do 3 hour commutes to UVic.
For schools in GTA like York, UofT, Ryerson, I would actually classify them as 'commuter' schools, especially York. A lot of my friends ended up going to one of these three schools to save money.
- Because they'd have to live in Europe for the duration of that degree
- Because loans are harder to get or impossible, depending on circumstances
- Because grants are exceedingly rare in such a case
- Because despite (some) American's belief about Europe, it still costs money to study here, and living here is just as expensive as in the US. You won't be able to afford a car, for example, as a student (yes yes not all US students have one either, what I'm saying is that it's a significant adjustment to what many of them are used to)
- Because it results in a European degree, which may be only a small problem for some (US) employers, but is probably somewhere between 'hmm, peculiar' and 'hell no' for most of them
- Because they'd be away from 'home' for 4 years or more, unless they'd spend 5-10k over the course of those 4 years traveling back and forth
- Because outside of STEM (and even then), language issues are non-negligible
- Hard copies of diplomas: 2 * 100 zł (~$30) = $60.
I am quite happy with the education I got there, and US companies seem to hold it pretty highly, based on how many people they hire out of my university.
Come to think of it, the diploma fee is not actually obligatory -- if you don't need the hard copy, you don't have to pay.
Oh, and there are fees for failing classes and having to repeat them, but there are also scholarships for doing well, so it cancels out.
Or study in Scotland where tuition should be free for you too. Only English, Welsh and Northern Irish pay in Scotland (Northern Irish seem to have the option to take up an Irish passport then qualify for the free tuition too - I'm sure someone else on HN will explain the mechanics of that). But it's not simply free tuition - you have living expenses too and moving to another country can make these much higher than a resident who gets to stay with their parents or relatives to cut costs.
I'm not sure how useful it is in general for people to forum shop round countries for education, except for Americans where going domestic seems to be a recipe for permanent debt rather than improving life opportunities. Even expensive countries seem to be a way better option for Americans seeking to avoid the constant thread of bankruptcy.
Exactly. Well, it charges tuition for foreign students, however they were around $1000 for a term, so Bachelor degree would cost you $6000 in tuition fees.
Living in Warsaw (room, food and alcohol) would cost you $350-450 a month if you're willing to have flatmates, and $550-650 if you want to rent a whole apartment.
46 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 110 ms ] threadIt's a shame Waterloo is falling into the US model of paying expensive tuition for fancy new buildings.
I only had to pay co-op fees for the semesters before I actually went on a co-op term; and the first co-op term wasn't until after second year.
Although it wasn't a huge part of the overall cost, $500+ is still a significant amount of money for a first year student.
I went to Dalhousie University
EDIT: As he points out below, it's different for different programs (even within engineering some pay 2 terms before their first term and some pay 1 term before. However the fees continue onwards for every term that the student is not in co-op).
My parents weren't rich enough to pay for more than the residence costs, so I needed to get a part time job in order to do anything outside of school. It was just enough so that I could go out every now and then or buy a CD. But I left school with zero debt.
The idea that kids today leave school with 6 figure debts is crazy to me. Being disadvantaged with such a huge debt load means they can't afford to take risks, which is something that young people should be able to do. It's at the point where it might not be worth it to pay for that top school education if it means becoming and indentured servant to your debt.
This article is about the University of Waterloo in Ontario. Ontario student loans are need-based, and each academic year any loan amount beyond $7,300 is forgiven.
See also https://osap.gov.on.ca/OSAPPortal/en/A-ZListofAid/PRDR008169...
What's also insane is that the average detached home in Toronto just hit over 1M last week (http://www.thestar.com/business/2015/07/07/toronto-average-h...). I live just north of Toronto near a highly desirable high school, and there are usually bidding wars on homes. A lot of houses sell over asking. Getting 100K over asking is not unheard of.
I bought my house 10 years ago (and thought I was overpaying back then), and I don't know how people can afford to buy a home these days in the GTA. In the decade that I bought my house, property values in my neighborhood have doubled and then some, and I'm pretty sure salaries have not.
A lot of young families live in my area, and I can't imagine how expensive tuition will be when their small children are ready for a post-secondary education. Juggling a gigantic mortgage and saving for your kids' education is incredibly tough these days.
Tech scene here is meh, people would love to tell you Slack is a Vancouver company or it's a thriving hub but so far we only have Hootsuite (with a huge platform risk). Facebook is here to only hire foreigners as well as Microsoft, Amazon is the only one hiring locals (but work/life balance is just as worse as local shops) and a whole range of varying sweathshops/agencies/startups who can't recruit talent themselves (either due to penny pinching reputation or barely getting by with high employee turnover) rely on aggressive and rude recruiters who love to keep hourly wages down so they can make more money on that 3 month contract with false promises it will turn into a full time position (you get fired after they've done exploiting you). Rent is ok if you like sharing with a roommate but otherwise you are stuck with a high rent rate in a tiny space.
It's common to hear stories like some IT support guy pulling $50,000 year makes hefty monthly payment on his mortgage on a million dollar shack (real estate agents love the whole its-gonna-get-expensive-so-buy-now) because his parents told him that he needs to buy a house by using variable interest rate debt. Troubling fact is there's a lot of people doing this, our household debt ratio is much higher than those prior to the subprime mortgage crisis (people in denial saying "but there's no bubble in Vancouver, we are different.")
There's a lot of people that's going to be ruined when the bubble bursts and they suddenly can't make a payment or they are out of a job due to the impact it will have on Vancouver's economy.
The common complaint amongst recruiter is that they can't find senior engineers in Vancouver or they can't recruit any American engineers (I wonder why). Senior engineer, family man pulling $90,000/year (often told to take or leave it) would rather make more just south of the border with far lower living costs and able to actually negotiate a higher raise (instead of a couple thousand bucks if you work 50 hour weeks).
Even if you were doing alright the city has no life because people don't have disposable income like in other cities due to high living cost and strict code for venues shutting down after 1AM. People are isolated, friendly to tourists maybe but people are very cliquey, don't like to include the unfamiliar. People realize Vancouver actually kind of sucks and leaves and ridiculed for it with attitude from people who fake affluency like 'k thx bye we live in the best city in the world'. Hell, even people who grew up here are eager to leave if not already. The brain drain is accelerating and destroying intellectual capital (masters in finance becoming a carpenter because they studied for a job that doesn't exist). Sad because there's always a friend that is leaving Vancouver, and never coming back.
Some of us are determined to live here however and make it work but it also means that you must become an independent freelancer/consultant working for non local clients or starting a business (which actually is made pretty favorable in Vancouver) with a very cheap english speaking labor force in the same time zone as SV. The weak loonie also means American employers save additional 20%.
1) This is for one, 4 month term at university in Canada (uwaterloo specifically) for an engineering degree. Other degrees are lesser in cost (math is similar, which includes CS) A lot of the miscellaneous fees drop off in the second term (you only pay them once per year).
2) These are domestic fees, international fees are much higher (approx 3x) but still only around 1/3rd of the international US tuition.
3) This includes residence and food in it.
4) Co-op fees are paid for every term before you go on co-op, engineering typically has 6 terms before we graduate.
5) It is FAR cheaper to live off campus and cook.
6) It is still far cheaper than the US universities (even if you're in state)
EDIT: The image for the fees was for one 4 month term.
Furthermore visa and citizenship requirements probably preclude the same for international students, however I'm not too well informed in that regard.
For the FH Köln, the exact amount is €246.20. This comprises the following:
* Administrative fee for "Kölner Studentenwerk", providing services such as cheap apartments or help with financial questions: €68.00
* Public transport ticket for the VRS region (around Cologne): €116.80
* Addon ticket for public transport in the whole state (NRW): €48.10
* Fee for the student council ("AStA"): €13.10
* Solidarity contribution (for Eastern Germany): €0.20
There may be additional fees for some courses, such as 100€ for "study material" for distant learning courses. Public universities may also offer some courses that require you to pay, as the FH Köln does for their Master's program for Game Development. However, the vast majority of courses don't require such fees.
Of course, there are also private universities. Their fees are roughly €400-€700/month.
[0] For the FH Köln: https://www.fh-koeln.de/en/academics/fees_5908.php [1] For the University Köln: http://verwaltung.uni-koeln.de/studsek/content/studium/rueck...
At the moment you'd also be getting something like a 20% discount for the dollar exchange rate.
Living on campus first year was expensive but I don't think I ever spent more than a couple thousand bucks per semester with a 4 course as full load that lasts 4 months. Science courses were the cheapest based on my experience of switching majors many many times. Business courses were the most expensive and the easiest and had no substance. We had like one student union fee which wasn't much, food was cheap if you just ate instant food. Oh and I spent like 3.5~4 hours daily just commuting to campus and back for 3 years. I remember I did some math and I spent a few months of my life just on commuting. All that work to get a piece of paper that can't even be used as toilet paper because it's so rough or rolled to smoke herbs due to fact that it emits toxic fumes upon combustion from the ink which says I'm qualified for absolutely nothing.
1 - http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/140911/t140911b001-...
Waterloo is not a commuter school, a 45-minute one-way commute would be really bad. Schools outside the GTA are similar, few people decide to do stuff like live with parents in Chatham and drive to a school in London but it's not common. GTA schools will have longer commutes because it's bigger, rent close to schools tends to be expensive, and transport sucks.
But that's not unlike Metro Vancouver vs rest of B.C. really. I doubt many people do 3 hour commutes to UVic.
- Because loans are harder to get or impossible, depending on circumstances
- Because grants are exceedingly rare in such a case
- Because despite (some) American's belief about Europe, it still costs money to study here, and living here is just as expensive as in the US. You won't be able to afford a car, for example, as a student (yes yes not all US students have one either, what I'm saying is that it's a significant adjustment to what many of them are used to)
- Because it results in a European degree, which may be only a small problem for some (US) employers, but is probably somewhere between 'hmm, peculiar' and 'hell no' for most of them
- Because they'd be away from 'home' for 4 years or more, unless they'd spend 5-10k over the course of those 4 years traveling back and forth
- Because outside of STEM (and even then), language issues are non-negligible
Five Years (BS + MSc) University Expenses in Poland (University of Warsaw):
- Registration fee (for BS and MSc separately): 80 zł (~$25) * 2 = $50
- Hard copies of diplomas: 2 * 100 zł (~$30) = $60.
I am quite happy with the education I got there, and US companies seem to hold it pretty highly, based on how many people they hire out of my university.
Come to think of it, the diploma fee is not actually obligatory -- if you don't need the hard copy, you don't have to pay.
Oh, and there are fees for failing classes and having to repeat them, but there are also scholarships for doing well, so it cancels out.
However please bear in mind that it it is free ONLY for the 38 million Polish citizens. Foreigners must pay something.
Ref: http://www.studyinpoland.pl/en/index.php/education-in-poland...
I'm not sure how useful it is in general for people to forum shop round countries for education, except for Americans where going domestic seems to be a recipe for permanent debt rather than improving life opportunities. Even expensive countries seem to be a way better option for Americans seeking to avoid the constant thread of bankruptcy.
Living in Warsaw (room, food and alcohol) would cost you $350-450 a month if you're willing to have flatmates, and $550-650 if you want to rent a whole apartment.