SANDRAPAUL

Thats now - not when the changes come in. It will have then have an effect as I exampled.

ie. from 2006-2007 year popular courses and popular Unis will charge the £3,000 per year fees. It is the way they will stem up the tide of losses that they claim are being made at further education facilities. With this there is averaged around £6,000 for living expenses, food, travel, books etc, which is conservative as in life it is always more.

One needs to look ahead to what is coming to make plans.

Hence it will likely be little different £ to $


and... you can get cheap education anywhere.

MikeUK

But you said “UK. £3,000 per year is the course fees which is coming in as a minimum level� which was not true!

Maybe you should read this
http://www.dmu.ac.uk/study/student_s...cePageID=21563

a Q& A paper from Leicester Uni…

Just to quote “ The Government proposes to allow universities to charge fees of up to £3,000 per year. This figure is capped until 2010. Therefore, a university can charge anything from £0 to £3,000 for their courses. Universities can choose to charge the same fee for all courses or vary the fees by course.�

Not really the same thing is it !!!!

Scare mongering helps nobody, and on cheap education I chose Nottingham Uni for the costs ..its a"red brick" one of the best certainly not cheap!

iaink

There is no harm in people posting there negative thoughts here, after all we are looking for a balanced view, however I have my doubts about this thread too.

I am inclined to take many of the postings with a dose of salt. The overt negativity with no redeaming features is a big clue that this is stage two culture shock, and the overt positivity in some of the replies is stage one of the culture shock thing.

When all said and done, despite a common language, Canada is a foreign country, so why would you even bother making comparisons to the UK way of doing things. Things are going to be different here, and even moving within the UK there would be a period of adjustment to deal with.

There will be teathing problems, figuring out the way things are organised here, but thats a transitionary stage, and you get over it. Once you are at that point, then its more reasonable to decide if you like the way things work here. I'm sure posters look into things like education costs for there kids before they make the move here, and weigh up the pros and cons. Nothing has changed in the recent past to change the facts those decisions were based on. Looking at the take up rates for further education in Canada and the UK, they are pretty similar, so people are obviously finding a way to do it in both places, and even in my day I left UK Uni with an unhealthy debt, just like everyone else. Thats just modern life I'm afraid, if you want to play the game, those are the rules.

FWIW I thought Wizzards post in the "Informal tips" thread was wonderfull, and should be compulsory reading for potential expats! Write it out ten times so it sinks in!

http://britishexpats.com/forum/showt...21#post1966321

Glaswegian

RESPs can be used for teenage children too. They dont need to be started when the child is two. If there are really good school fee plans in the UK then you probably have one then - so whats the problem.

The more important points is you obviously didnt check out university education before you arrived - or if you did then you ignored your own research. I have said to a number of people to be aware of the high cost of university here - the response is usually - we have equity in the house we are selling and we are not worried. Well you should be!

In my view you are not interested in finding ways to solve your problems. You seem determined to be unhappy.

Mrs G

iaink

Complete the list for yourself!

Symptoms of Culture Shock
1. Feeling very angry over minor inconveniences
check
2. Irritability
check
3. Withdrawal from people who are different from you
check
4. Extreme homesickness
check
5. Sudden intense feeling of loyalty to own culture
check
6. Overeating or loss of appetite

7. Boredom

8. A need for excessive sleep

9. Headaches

10. Upset stomach

11. Small pains really hurt

12. Depression

13. Loss of ability to work or study effectively

14. Unexplainable crying

15. Marital or relationship stress

16. Exaggerated cleanliness

17. Feeling sick much of the time


http://www.uwec.edu/counsel/pubs/shock.htm

SANDRAPAUL

I suppose I am looking from a personal point of view. My daughters Uni's both in the UK and Canada both quote around the 3,000 figure when she would start £ or $ for the course itself. Hence the figures. I have also seen many figures above the £3,000 so these must be higher for some reason outside the capping...?

Therefore the minimum figure of £3,000 for a good course at a good Uni will more than likely be be true. And its these Uni's that tend to have higher living costs associated with them.

Courses and Uni's that are not well supported and are desperate for students will charge less as they have no choice. Supply and demand.

I am comparing top Canadian to top UK Uni's. I have the leaflets and the specs on the web. Depends on where you look.

Now look at the average household income figures (and yes that is all you can do to get an overall picture and £10-12,000 is over one third of an average UK household income of £27,500 whereas $15,000 is probably one fifth or thereabouts of a quoted Canadian Governement figure of $83,000 per household.

SANDRAPAUL

My God. I have culture shock and I haven't left yet!

Glaswegian

Can you tell us where the $83K came from - to me it looks a bit on the high side for an 'average' household income. Just like GBP looks a bit on the low side.

Given that the spread of salaries is probably the same between countries I am surprised to see such a difference between the two. I'm wondering if the method of calculating the 'average' is the same. I would have expected the numbers to be within 10K to 20K of each other (ignoring the currency).

Its the second time in two days I've had the UK average salary quoted to me so I'm assuming it came from the same source.

I'm not doubting your figures - just the methods from the original source. In theory salary averages should skew downwards as there are more people on the lower incomes than on the higher incomes.

Mrs G

iaink

I thought that too, but its 2002 stats canada average gross household income for two adults with kids.

I guess it varies a lot from place to place, and that this gross income includes canada child tax benefit, but the poll done here a while ago would tend to indicate that most newcomers are looking at less then 40k IIRC.


Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics!

http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/famil05a.htm

SANDRAPAUL

Both sets of figures come from respective Government web sites. Nothing with me. But I know an awful lot of people (households) on a lot less than £27,500, especially out of the cities. I expect you know many households on no where near $83,000...

But the figures must come from some research done in each country.

I would be very happy with a job - even happier if I actually like it.

And yes with our assetts we should be able to get 3 kids through Uni and onto the street without them having debts. No way we could do that in the UK as they are all (3) within 3 years of one another. Imagine car loans, mortgages, high living costs. Cannot be done without wining the lottery.

And they want to work in Canada/US so its a bonus.

I bet it won't work out though. All very well on paper but something will no doubt go wrong.

P

Grah

Julius,

So are you going back to exactly where you came from?

How will your boy do with missing the last school year?

Did you say he was 15 now will that mean he would have to got to college to get his A levels before uni or will he go back to senior school?

Glad I never went to Ont as my 17 year old hates maths did consumer maths at school, Graduated last year. Worked in Superstore 2-3 eshifts a week last summer/fall. Started uni across the road from my work last September (not 18 until next Aug) Paid for his own courses, so I don't even know how much they cost. Plans on getting a student summer job to pay for next year, and part - time evening job to buy a car and the other stuff.

The school put him and 1 daughter a year up for their Canadian age, and the October born in her Canadian Age level. Girls love maths and Oldest is taken those university level course and is thriving 16. The boy was honour roll +80% on all subjects except maths which he only got about 60%

So from my experience talking about the kids ability and "their mental age " with the school is so important to getting the right level of course work for them is good here. As for them making friends I'll repeat what I have said before.

"Enroll you kid in their activity, be it Sports, Skate boarding, Band, Dance, especial teens, local fishing club as it will get them the opportunity to talk to new people with the same interest."

When your kid finishes school and goes to work\further education he'll have to learn to make new friends and adjust to new stressors. So hopefully this experience will have taught him some good things about life.


So here's hoping you can get back to what you had and more in your next location.

Grah.

Tiaribbon

Horses are pretty cheap over here. You can get a decent registered Quarter Horse for about $6,000 but if you are prepared to go for a younger one you can pick it up for as little as $3,000.

There are lots of farriers - their skills? depends on the farrier. It is about $30 so much cheaper than in the UK.

Feed - bloody nightmare! They only have about 15 types and none of them are anything like what we feed in the UK! I have tried a number of bags - hit and miss really!

Hay - very cheap! I have just had a load delivered and paid $2.25 a bale.

I will be happy to chat to you about this and other things if you want to send me a PM or email.

souls canuck

and I will say the west is notorious for working to live.. and the east lives to work.. stupid really!!

and I am homesick too according to that list!! I am 2000 miles from home.. even though my surroundings have palm trees instead of piles of snow.. I still can't hang with my mates.. and everythign else.. but I will stick it out for awhile.. one thing I am looking forward to is my travel papers and a new job.. make some money and go home for a visit. even though this is my home now, I will always refer to canada as home. even my usa hunsband calls canada home

julius smith

hello, grah and thanks for your helpful comments!
yes, i know, we made a terrible mistake in that we knew very well that education costs were high etc, but we thought, lets give it a try and see first! one thing i am is that i dont just sit around making plans--i jolly well go and try things out to see, so thats why we came here, tried it but just know in our heart of hearts, that we will never fit in. the culture here is just too different compared to england--aside of the education costs or whatever. i met an englishwoman today who is a friend of a friend here, and she's been here over 25 yrs. she said that even after such a long time, she still misses england (and believe me, she had tears in her eyes as she told me that). its a thing that never leaves you, i guess. we will be going back to the same place we came from, streatham, as my house is still there thankfully. my kids will go back to their same schools and carry on as normal--i already phoned the headteachers up to tell them we are coming back and they said we'd be welcome! all we can say is that at least we tried and we will go back with our heads held high! the gist of this is that if we had come from a third world war torn country, then yes, this place would be paradise, but england is right up there in the top G7 nations, so the basics here are also to be had in england. by the way, it made me laugh, just a few days ago we had the thing called "freezing rain" which i thought was like sleet back home, but NO!!
when i went out to the car to pop out for some milk (something you could just do by walking to the corner shop in the uk!), i was standing still on the driveway, when i suddenly started sliding down, all the way to the bottom of our garage drive!! and when i got to the car, found it covered in 1/4 inch thick ice, so thick that the wipers were absolutely jampacked in ice, and no amount of scraping with those huge plastic spades they use here, would even dent the ice! in the end, i had to leave the engine and heater running for around 15 mins till the ice melted and i could drive off VERY slowly!! we will never complain about the cold in england again! :scared:

Grah

Yep that's lovely stuff, only had it once here and glad of that took 2 hours to slide to work.

Well best of Luck and I really do hope you all look back on your stay here, with an appreaciation for what you have in Streatham and what money can't buy.