College costs

[Obstruction]

My kids are dual citizens. The oldest just finished her first year at UNB Fredericton. I spent about $15K USD give or take on everything including spending money and travel. She got a $1500 CAD scholarship from the school for her HS grades and a $1000 USD one from a local org. Minutes after she accepted at UNB, Dal offered her $4500 CAD. However, she didn't really like Dal, they don't have her exact program with the specialty she wants, and she applied there only because I said she had to apply to more than one school. She really, really, really likes UNB. I mean it looks nice and all, however I will never understand her level of attachment for it. It's just a school. Hopefully she gets a good academic scholarship this year from UNB as she has a 4.3 GPA. It is cruel that they don't announce that until mid July. And she won some writing contest, but can't seem to tell me how much $$$. Of course I have a kid going into 11th and a kid going into 8th. I am screwed.

Nice, Sounds like UNB is a good fit for her and $15k is sweet deal. Mine ran about $22k per year (CAD & USD were at about par or near enough for the years he was at Dal.).

[mtngirl79]

Spending 500k for a upper level private education isn't that big of an expense over a 85 year life span.

16 bucks a day.

More than two hours of work a day at federal minimum wage...

[Peruvian]

Both of my daughters got varying levels of academic scholarships from schools they applied to. Daughter 1 stayed in state and daughter 2 is headed to DU in the fall. We have a middle class income and aren’t paying anywhere near $300-400k. If your kid applies to schools they are academically qualified for, they will likely get offers.

[iceman]

More than two hours of work a day at federal minimum wage...

Theoretically the grad won't be working for minimum wage.

[Viva]

Theoretically the grad won't be working for minimum wage.

Unless they graduated from fucla.

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[riser4]

the costs i'm hearing are usually under 20K a year for a Canadian Uni, almost nobody goes to an American school unless they got a sport scholarship or its for something unusual not offered in Canada

It is running right around $20K CAD per year right now for the full deal for Can citizens. Add another $10K for international students/non Can cit. Too bad she's not a NB resident. They get a huge chunk of change if they go to Uni in NB.

[XXX-er]

up narth here the kids either fight wildfires or pound trees into the ground for a couple months and play warcraft in their moms basement til september which easily gives them the 15-20K to do a year of uni ... until the next spring

makes em pretty tough but they are constantly at great risk of getting into either the tree planter or wildfire lifestyle, make big money & go skiing ... forget the school

[riser4]

up narth here the kids either fight wildfires or pound trees into the ground for a couple months and play warcraft in their moms basement til september which easily gives them the 15-20K to do a year of uni ... until the next spring

makes em pretty tough but they are constantly at great risk of getting into either the tree planter or wildfire lifestyle, make big money & go skiing ... forget the school

My daughter is not the wildfire type. And her summer gig won't clear that kind of coin. However, I am just happy she found something to do and isn't sitting around on her phone all day. Whatever she makes will help.

So when she was looking for jobs, she ran across two things that were frustrating. To work in a provincial park she had to be a resident of the province??? And all of the Parks Canada jobs in the east that she was interested in required her to be bi-lingual. She's not. She's trying, however it's not one of her priorities. So she's working in a Vermont State Park. Not exactly sure why the fascination with parks. I guess it is because they are seasonal.

[XXX-er]

yeah thats a federal gov kind of thing the requirement to speak french, makes sense back east but it will get you in the door even in BC where there is not a lot of french spoken they probably fill out the same form

[waxman]

yeah thats a federal gov kind of thing the requirement to speak french, makes sense back east but it will get you in the door even in BC where there is not a lot of french spoken they probably fill out the same form

My wife's cousin got a job at Banff park gates because she checked off bi-lingual on the box. No one checked her actual speaking ability. She said it was easier to hand out french pamphlets than talk anyways.
Also she would have been better off speaking German or Korean than french.

[old goat]

2 years of local community college and transfer to state school makes the most sense economically, especially if you have a prestigious state school. Of course you lose the precious experience of waking up at 11AM on the floor covered in vomit and surrounded by 40 of your closest friends, naked, all of it posted on FB.

For people with certain goals--foreign service, wall street law, high tech engineering--the big name schools make sense. For people who need a lot of personal attention, nurturing, and support, small schools make sense.

The valedictorian in my son's HS class--top of her class academically, star of the golf team, great personality--went to Harvard, dropped out after a year to live in a women's collective and do basically nothing.

I went to a pricey small liberal arts college and I can't say my education was any better than the cc to state school plan--maybe if I had been really into school and wanted an academic career in a non STEM field it would have been. I did get to hang out for 4 years with people like me--smart with no social skills-- but then I still had to figure out how to get along in the real world where most people are the opposite.

[Tippster]

Of course you lose the precious experience of waking up at 11AM on the floor covered in vomit and surrounded by 40 of your closest friends, naked, all of it posted on Snapchat/Instagram...

FIFY Old Goat. Nobody under 25 uses Facebook other than to stay in touch with their parents.

That said, there is still something to be said for the "traditional" college model IMHO. Maybe I'm just being nostalgic. I'll check back in 2 years when my daughter is a Junior.

[Sirshredalot]

2 years of local community college and transfer to state school makes the most sense economically, especially if you have a prestigious state school. Of course you lose the precious experience of waking up at 11AM on the floor covered in vomit and surrounded by 40 of your closest friends, naked, all of it posted on FB.

For people with certain goals--foreign service, wall street law, high tech engineering--the big name schools make sense. For people who need a lot of personal attention, nurturing, and support, small schools make sense.

The valedictorian in my son's HS class--top of her class academically, star of the golf team, great personality--went to Harvard, dropped out after a year to live in a women's collective and do basically nothing.

I went to a pricey small liberal arts college and I can't say my education was any better than the cc to state school plan--maybe if I had been really into school and wanted an academic career in a non STEM field it would have been. I did get to hang out for 4 years with people like me--smart with no social skills-- but then I still had to figure out how to get along in the real world where most people are the opposite.

Agreed, except I should point out that the foreign service is still exam-based.

[4matic]

I coach at a community college. You can get guaranteed entry into cal berk and all credits transfer as cal credit.

It’s actually easier for a two year transfer to get into a top private school because they have proven their commitment.

[riser4]

I coach at a community college. You can get guaranteed entry into cal berk and all credits transfer as cal credit.

It’s actually easier for a two year transfer to get into a top private school because they have proven their commitment.

Some states have better CCs than others. Ours has come a long way and has a long way to go. The only way to get decent credit transfer here in VT between CCV or the State Colleges and UVM is with very careful planning in very specific programs if you want to graduate in exactly four years. I experienced it 25 years ago and my daughter has friends encountering it now. Two friends went to CCV for their senior year in HS. One managed to get an associate's in basically a year and a half, transferred to UVM mid-year and will spend two years at UVM. The other has the same amount of time at CCV, got the same excellent grades, did not get an AA, and did not knock any time off the four years. It all boils down to the specific programs and specific classes.

[MontuckyFried]

Yeah, but you know that up and us are the only developed countries where college is not free?

We're also the only developed nation where the standards of admittance are so pathetically easy. College is "free" in many nations because the academic standards are actually stringent. In Europe, don't quite make the grade? Well, you gotta pay. Want to go the University of Tokyo? Well, you better have been studying your balls off since birth to make it, let alone even get into a proper HIGH SCHOOL around there. Yeah. Crazy hard entrance exams. I think we should do those, then I'm pro "free college." Our SAT exams are a joke if I scored as highly as I did. I consider myself perhaps of average intelligence, and I still scored a 1510. If we had the academic standards of most developed nations universities, we'd see attendance drop by like 90%. Haha.

[old goat]

FIFY Old Goat. Nobody under 25 uses Facebook other than to stay in touch with their parents.

That said, there is still something to be said for the "traditional" college model IMHO. Maybe I'm just being nostalgic. I'll check back in 2 years when my daughter is a Junior.

What's Instagram?

We're also the only developed nation where the standards of admittance are so pathetically easy. College is "free" in many nations because the academic standards are actually stringent. In Europe, don't quite make the grade? Well, you gotta pay. Want to go the University of Tokyo? Well, you better have been studying your balls off since birth to make it, let alone even get into a proper HIGH SCHOOL around there. Yeah. Crazy hard entrance exams. I think we should do those, then I'm pro "free college." Our SAT exams are a joke if I scored as highly as I did. I consider myself perhaps of average intelligence, and I still scored a 1510. If we had the academic standards of most developed nations universities, we'd see attendance drop by like 90%. Haha.

I know a little about Germany from friends--the kids get tracked into college prep or vocational early. Of course that makes more sense in a country that does as much specialized manufacturing as Germany does, but we could do a lot better job training people to make and fix things. I suspect most people sitting in cubicles would be happier doing something with their hands if the pay was equivalent. The big field up here is mechatronics at Sierra College--2 year program I think--and the ski areas can't hire the grads fast enough.

[MontuckyFried]

I know a little about Germany from friends--the kids get tracked into college prep or vocational early. Of course that makes more sense in a country that does as much specialized manufacturing as Germany does, but we could do a lot better job training people to make and fix things. I suspect most people sitting in cubicles would be happier doing something with their hands if the pay was equivalent. The big field up here is mechatronics at Sierra College--2 year program I think--and the ski areas can't hire the grads fast enough.

I can't agree with you more. Really pisses me off how our educational system places such little emphasis or notoriety in technical trades. One thing I admired about what I've seen in Europe, Japan, and other places is the value placed on skilled tradesmen. If you're a highly skilled woodworker in Scandinavia, you're a rock star who makes good money. I've seen plumbers and electricians in Germany who are as professional as any exec and do their jobs with utter precision. In Japan, they have the ideas of monozukuri and kaizen. Something we definitely don't see here. The level of pride you see from trash collectors to burger flippers is unbelievable. We could learn a thing or two, starting with respecting tradesmen more, which by the way, honestly can make more money than many degree-requiring white collar jobs. I say that as a broad generalization, but it's often true. I hope my kids follow their hearts and talents, whether they want to be a doctor or a plumber. Rock on!

[plugboots]

[riser4]

We're also the only developed nation where the standards of admittance are so pathetically easy. College is "free" in many nations because the academic standards are actually stringent. In Europe, don't quite make the grade? Well, you gotta pay. Want to go the University of Tokyo? Well, you better have been studying your balls off since birth to make it, let alone even get into a proper HIGH SCHOOL around there. Yeah. Crazy hard entrance exams. I think we should do those, then I'm pro "free college." Our SAT exams are a joke if I scored as highly as I did. I consider myself perhaps of average intelligence, and I still scored a 1510. If we had the academic standards of most developed nations universities, we'd see attendance drop by like 90%. Haha.

Right. And as pointed out, the trade-off for that is providing a lot more "technical" training so that those that don't make the university track can have a skill. In Germany there's a wide range of programs between University and ditch digging.

[old goat]

The downside of the German system is that for a trade like cabinet making--one I've read about--you do a long apprenticeship and have to pass an exam before you can go into business. Similar rules for a lot of trades I believe. Obviously it pays off in terms of quality but I think a lot of Americans would not be happy in a system like that.

[Skidog]

The downside of the German system is that for a trade like cabinet making--one I've read about--you do a long apprenticeship and have to pass an exam before you can go into business. Similar rules for a lot of trades I believe. Obviously it pays off in terms of quality but I think a lot of Americans would not be happy in a system like that.

Of course not. Instant gratification society.

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[BCMtnHound]

More likely the germans want the professions to dictate the quality of the product, rather than the market.

[XXX-er]

Right. And as pointed out, the trade-off for that is providing a lot more "technical" training so that those that don't make the university track can have a skill. In Germany there's a wide range of programs between University and ditch digging.

that sounds like a negative thing^^ when it is infered that students who "don't make " uni are somehow inferiour

it might mean they didnt wana go cuz they don't really like school so telling them academia is the be all and end all is BS, students should be able to start a trade in H-school which I understand is possible in Yurp

I read the "mount your own fucking ski" thread and see dentists who " didn't make" simple layout & working with hand tools

[waxman]

The downside of the German system is that for a trade like cabinet making--one I've read about--you do a long apprenticeship and have to pass an exam before you can go into business. Similar rules for a lot of trades I believe. Obviously it pays off in terms of quality but I think a lot of Americans would not be happy in a system like that.

Happy, as in actually held accountable for the work or job they are doing? Yeah, I can see that.