Oink

Canada does that to you.

Pizzawheel

Poutine Missiles Ahead!

Aviator

Something to be proud of!

HGerchikov

Co-op courses help with the financing (assuming its a paid co-op). My eldest is on such a course studying accounting. He worked 4 months last summer at his company, 4 months this year, I think 8 months next year. He is getting experience in his chosen field, the time he works can be credited against the requirements for his professional designation once he gets his degree and he gets paid a significant amount which helps considerably with the cost.

Pizzawheel

These Coop programmes produce the best graduates as well, as they come out much more "work ready" than standard grads, given the highly academic non-vocational nature of Canadian degrees. I'm thinking waterloo in particular.

SchnookoLoly

Laurier I believe is also known for its co-op program. Unless I am mis-remembering that. But I'm pretty sure it's Laurier.

Most other universities will allow you to do a co-op semester if you manage to find a placement - one girl in my program did it, even though my program otherwise did not normally "offer" co-op opportunities, more just standard summer jobs, but she had an opportunity to do a 12-month one so she spoke to the school admin and got it all sorted out to do it.

Shard

I believe present UK system already provides full HE access by means of soft loans.

The more interesting question is that raised by MarkG - whether the majority of jobs in 20 years' time will require they type of education that had been commonplace thus far (lawyering and vetting excepted - of course).

ExKiwilass

BCIT grads are highly prized here for the same reason. Interestingly, the BCIT engineering grads are progressing more quickly and being promoted over master's degree students from big name schools in the east....and from UBC...

colchar

What are you going on about? Student loans are geared to the tuition a student pays so they do not cause someone to choose a course they can afford? And what do sports scholarships have to do with anything, especially when Canadian schools cannot offer sports scholarships in the same way that US schools do?

colchar

What degree in Canada costs $200K? In the US maybe, but not in Canada.

colchar

What a ridiculous statement.

colchar

Laurier doesn't have an extensive co-op program, and it certainly isn't anywhere near as good as Waterloo's (which is the largest in the world). I did my B.A. at Waterloo and my Master's at Laurier so am familiar with both schools.

SchnookoLoly

Entirely possible my memory was escaping me and it was Waterloo I was thinking of instead! Happy to be corrected if I was mistaken!

dbd33

Students in Canada have the choice of schools in Canada or the US. Other places as well but commonly they'll go to a school in one of those countries. For example, a colleague's children went to Florida as they could get most of their course funded on the strength of playing tennis. Someone in my daughter's high school class went to Brown on the strength of knowing iced hockey. Cradles may be different but most students won't favour a school because it's in one country or the other.

I could have phrased my post better but my point is that, if someone has to borrow $100,000 to finish school, they are more likely to take something saleable, something that will refund the payments, "a course they can afford", than the one to which they are most academically suited. Thus we get electrical engineers and not historians; society wants engineers, it doesn't want historians. Of course, to a Thatcherite, this is good but it's not learning for its own sake which, to me, is the point of education.

dbd33

Every week, when you post that, you make me reconsider my argument that education is unequivocally a good thing. Surely you could have been inarticulate and parochial without taking up space in those classes; think of all the tyres you could have mounted or milk bottles you could have delivered during that wasted decade.