Pizzawheel

I've been pondering this awhile. A lot of us- me included- think this is a better place to raise kids; the space, the parks, the Canadian niceness.

But I've started to ponder the future inspired by learning more about the difficulties of social mobility (that's probably not what I mean but bear with me) in the states. Basically I see you needing a certificate, diploma or degree before you can do anything down there, hence if you can't afford the qualifications, you can't progress. Contrast this with Britain where anyone with some smarts and application can make something of themselves.

I think Canada is getting more and more like the US, certainly you need a full portfolio of certificates and cards before you can even fart here.

So my fears are, if we don't have the $50-80k per child to get them a suitable bit of paper, are we actually selling them (our kids) short?

Thoughts?

colchar

You wouldn't need that amount - your kids could work part-time and pay for some of their own education. They could also take out student loans through the government.

dbd33

I don't think Canada is different from the US in any substantive way except the provision of healthcare. I do think that, in either country, the decent thing for parents to do is to fund their children's tuition. I think there's a fair chance that children raised in Canada will be bright enough to go to school in the US anyway making any difference in systems moot.

I think student loans are a criminal idea. They distort education by causing students to choose courses they can afford or colleges that offer sports scholarships and they disrupt lives by causing people to move to godforsaken places like Alaska and Dubai and Fort McMurray where they can generate the revenue to pay them back. It's enough to expect a student to earn enough to drink, and eat, without paying tuition.

One of the better pieces of advice I received when arriving here was that the mortgage should be paid off by the time the children finish high school so that the house can be remortgaged for the tuition. We did that though, in the event, didn't have to borrow against it.

It seems to me that the price of education, like the price of cheese, is one of the variables one has to offset against the cheap housing here.

Oink

Firstly thats not strictly true. We waste copious amount of intellectual talent due to the economic and social factors.

For instance; Mapped: Where England’s best schools are pushing up house prices - Telegraph


Secondly, have you seen the price of HE tuition in the UK these days? Unlike the US we don't have a well established and mature system of scholarships and bursaries.

That said, you are right to worry about a system of increasing credentialization. Fortunately for you, the cost of HE in Canada is extremely low compared to the US or the UK. But it still costs, but as colchear said, with loans, parental support, scholarships and student work you should be able to find a way to finance their education.

MarkG

Seems to me that the university bubble is on the verge of bursting, anyway. Too many kids borrowing $200k for a 'Tarantino Movie Studies' degree who then find themselves living in their parents' basement, hoping to find a job flinging coffee in Starbucks.

If I had kids, I'd seriously suggest they skip university and do something useful instead. Very few people really need degrees.

dbd33

I dunno, it seems to me that there are so many degrees sploshing around that, if you want to hire an hod carrier, you may as well have one with a degree in kinesiology; someone trained to waggle cheerfully on a ladder.

The worst compromise, I think, is the commuter student - ones who live with their parents. Grow up, already.

Sally Redux

ExKiwilass

Who knows.

Things have changed so much over the past 10 years that i fully expect they will have changed even more by the time sprog leaves school.

She'll probably do some kind of HE, she's already talking about it. I agree the uni degrees, unless professional, are not guarantees of anything but i also don't think I should be crushing her intellectual dreams too early. Plenty of time for that

dbd33

Then maybe think about having her learn about joined up letters?

MarkG

If you're having kids today, hod carriers won't be around by the time they reach university age, as most new houses will be printed on site. The vast majority of jobs will vanish before those kids reach what we consider retirement age, so they won't need to worry whether the person hiring them expects them to have a degree, as they'll be working for themselves.

SchnookoLoly

I think SOME higher education is pretty much a requirement if your kids want to go into a professional world. And that doesn't necessarily mean university. There are college courses that are much better suited to some career paths - for example, a friend of mine is super artsy and knew in high school she wanted to go into interior design. University was not the place for her to do that, she did that at the college level instead, and then was flexible with where she moved as different cities have different demands. Another friend from high school was incredibly talent artistically with drawings and such, and he wanted to go to animation. Sheridan College in Oakville is the place to do that - Disney recruits directly out of Sheridan's animation program. He's currently working for Pixar, I believe.

For me, I knew I wanted to go into a business and IT area out of high school, so university was going to be the path to get there for me. My brother wanted to do engineering - same thing for him. University was the option.

For a different side of things, our contractor who is redoing our bathroom has his mid-20s son working with him. His son is super handy and clearly inherited his dad's talent and love of "general handyman" work. However, he wants to get into trades for corporations instead of for homeowners, because there's more money to be made there, however, those projects and contracts are much stricter in terms of qualifications etc, so he's going through the process of getting all his various certifications so he can start making that move.

I do get frustrated when you hear something like "oh my kid has a degree in Tarantino movies and s/he can't get a job!" Well, yeah... there's an element of needing to be able to work out what you can do with a particular degree. Some degrees simply won't be able to stand up on their own and will need something extra. A friend of mine knew she wanted to work in corporate HR, so she did her undergrad in Sociology, but knew that wouldn't cut it on its own, so after she graduated she did a 1-year diploma for a particular HR-related certification at the local college, and then she got hired from that.

"Higher education" doesn't necessarily need to mean "you must go to university or you will not become anything", in my opinion it simply means that for the majority of jobs that have higher earning potential and room for career growth etc require some kind of further learning after high school.

dbd33

Most? Nah. And, in any case, hod carrying is a skill with such broad applicability; residential, commercial, agricultural, recreational, that a man who's deft with his hod will always be wanted somewhere.

Lychee

Going back to the original post - Canada doesn't offer a better place to raise kids, it offers a different place to raise kids. That's all. Different places, different lifestyles, different values.

Oink

People can justify not bothering to save for their children's HE all they like but when one looks at successful middle and upper middle class families, they all invest in their children's education, whenever its private K-12 or university, there is a strong correlation between the amount and type of education and career earnings.

SchnookoLoly

I agree with this - it's not as black and white as "better" or "worse", it's just different, and then whether it's better or worse just depends on you and your individual family, and what you are looking for. Mr Schnooks determined that for us and what we wanted that Canada fit the bill better than the UK, though not by much, so we decided to give it a go. So far, so good.