dbd33

I think they should have. It seems to me that education is valuable for its own sake. Ideally society should educate its citizens until their heads are full; rationing education by academic criteria not financial and not vocational ones.

It's a shame the well educated wind up having to go lawyering but perhaps they've advanced civilisation slightly while analyzing sonnets.

Atlantic Xpat

I moved here and had kids after I arrived. Had I stayed in the UK I might well still have had kids. Just not with the same woman.

Jericho79

I thought I did, but to be clear, I think university education should be paid for by the state. That is to say I think the tuition fees should be paid for. Books, etc, should be paid for by the student.

Oink

When you ration education like that, the working class end up paying for the middle and upper middle classes to attend HE and thus the middle classes maintain their privilege. The middle classes have far more cultural capital and means to navigate and take advantage of the system tot he exclusion of working class or lower socio-economic students. The best solution, is for an open market of tuition fees, scholarships and means-tested loans and grants, coupled with a government subsidy in block grants to institutions that accommodate working class students. The system will still be unequal in status but there will be access for all students who wish to attend some form of HE.

Almost Canadian

Just the first course, or every course a student wishes to take? When does the student have a responsibility to pay for it themselves? What if the course is not available locally? Say I choose to study European Legal Studies in Edinburgh, should Canadian taxpayers fund the tuition and books for me?

Jericho79

Do you have an opinion, or you just being deliberately obtuse?

haggis88

Almost Canadian

I believe that all courses after leaving school should be funded by the student, for the reasons outlined by Oink above, with the appropriate adjustments made to alleviate financial hardship.

Will you now please provide a specific answer to the questions I have asked.

ann m

With two teenagers in the house the prospect of paying for HE is very real right now and it's frightening.

I agree with dbd that the idea of a commuter student living with parents could thwart the whole growing up and coping alone part of student life. But the reality of about $15k per year, per child to live away (and there could be a two year overlap for us) is not economically viable for us to fully fund, so the extra will have to come from somewhere else. I'm struggling with how to ration or balance the costs and who takes responsibility for what. Yes, I want to help, and can afford to pay towards HE. But I can't and won't fund all of it. I don't want my kids to have huge loans either, but what is a reasonable debt load for them to carry? And then there's the balance of a part-time job while studying. We'll have health issues to stress about too - physical and good mental health. Staying in my basement for an extra year or two will likely be a safer option for all parties!

It will all work out in the end, I'm sure. We have friends funding offspring with tuition and also spending/sending thousands of $$ per month to cover rent and food.

We have some savings - is it right to deplete them all to help the kids? One wants to go to the UK. One was considering a degree that might take 7 years. I will need to be able to fund my wine while I worry about this.

Almost Canadian

We are in a similar situation to you in that both of the kids that still live with us want to pursue careers that will require multiple degrees (Vet and lawyer).

We put large amounts of money into savings funds in the UK and into RESPs here. Whatever amounts are in those funds when our children attend university is all we are willing to contribute towards their education, the rest will have to be funded by them. We could, likely, fund it in full but we have always brought our kids up to know about personal responsibility and we have always informed them that we will not be funding 100% of their education. We have made sacrifices to provide them with the assistance that we have, they will have to make sacrifices too.

Pizzawheel

I'm hugely chuffed to have started such a good thread.

My thoughts on a few of the good points raised (sorry couldn't do multiple quotes):

Yeah this isn't an absolute, but I suspect many of the parents on here think it is. Probably linked to where you've come from in Blighty.

Well that's true and something the UK does very well- let people get on and do a job. I fear it's less here, you might not need the degree, but if you don't have it you're doomed to be a worker serf - unless you start your own gig. And then you'll need the degree to get the licenses to run your own gig anyhow.

The reference I kind of spotted stated the US had nearly the lowest social mobility, really down at third world levels (as are so many USA-nian things). It lit a light bulb for me- the gatekeeper for this is the $$$ needed to get the degree to let you I the door of the professions. It's like a class system but worse.

Here's the tricky one. Give it out for free and of course every other 18 year old will take a 3-year holiday to do 12 hours a week studying Patagonian grammar in the 17th century. And then hand the bill back to the taxpayer. But I do think education should be largely free and funded. Maybe there should be restrictions on the number of arts programmes available, so you get more a of a scholarship system going? This might mean only the rich can study the arts. I don't know, there's a pitfall in every approach.

Personally, that's my fear. At the moment my mortgage won't be paid off by the time the mini-wheels have finished high school, in fact they'll be inheriting the mortgage after I've retired (or rather I'll be that grumpy 70-year old in Home Despot). So would they be better off in the UK? Where if we move back in time (ie not when they're 18) they could get a degree for considerably less? Or better have the chance to go out into the world and pick up the degree later, like wot I did.

I have to say kicking the 3 years of lay-ins and student shenanigans down the line was something I appreciated, like saving a bit of your childhood for later.

dbd33

I should say that I funded one degree each and then only the tuition, some books and very limited beer money. The students still had to work to live. The subsequent degrees were self funded (I don't think I could have raised the funds to support children through further education in London and Vancouver even if I'd felt so inclined; those are expensive places to live).

That said, my overall feeling is that one should be glad to have such problems; the cost of supporting a child who cannot be educated is in a whole other league.

ExKiwilass

good point DBD.

We have been saving for Sprout HE since her birth - I have a Canadian partner so that was the deal from the get-go. We don't tell her much about it though and honestly there's not that much in there. It will probably just fund tuition and books at this point.

the OH applied for scholarships and the like, we've told her she can do the same. I don't have a problem with her staying home and studying - plenty of options around here, plenty of diversity and from a $$$ POV it makes sense. having said that, if she really wants to go elsewhere she can but she will need to help _ I certainly worked all through my degree and so did the OH.

Pizzawheel

Another advantage of going to uni (slightly) late- you can earn a better rate than bar work/ labouring. But probably not stripping. And it counts double if you stay below various tax thresholds.

Pizzawheel

I've just read the CTV article about the public sector being so much better. Another strike against growing up in Canada- if you end up in a spoon fed public sector job and the economy does go bang, you're going to find it much harder to head out and find something else.

But now I'm sounding like a total Thatcherite. OMG.