Cost for university-education?

uzi

How much costs the university-education in USA/GB/Kanada/Australia???

Here in Germany the government introduces this costs/payments too at the state-universities and many people don't agree to this.


P.S. These are 500€ in a semestre.... at the moment....

hutstein

at my university of applied sciences in germany it will be 370€ / semester.
The university can decide it on it's own between 0 and 500 €

uzi

hm... interessant

ADM

I'm paying something like AUS$500 per semester per subject. So you're doing usually around 4 -5 subjects a semester for 3 years.

So all up it's like nearly $15000 AUS.

Good thing is that the government pays all of that upfront and you just have to pay it back bit by bit when you get a full time job after you graduate.

ithcy

here in the US it's considerably more expensive. the average is around $22000/year for private colleges and $6000/year for public universities. this is tuition only - it doesn't include books or room and board (you're required to pay for on-campus housing as an undergraduate in most cases). a bachelor's degree takes 4 years on average.

most people pay with some combination of grants (which are not much, but you don't have to pay back) and loans (which you have to pay back after a few years). the interest rates on these loans have been rising rapidly in the last two years.

ADM

Oh yeah mine doesn't include books or amneties fees and such. So add around anotehr $800 a year on top.

Kosmo

Makes me think about the quality of the education, sure you pay for it and it SHOULD be good, but you go to uni for 3-4 years? In Finland most of the average studies goes for about 7 years, currently they don't cost anything, but when it goes over that 7-10 years you have to start paying some nominal fee. Housing and such usually costs something, but we get goverment aid for living and goverment backed student loan if need be (tho the system is so stupid that 90% of the time, you need the loan). Just to be clear, I'm not judging the quality of the education in general, I just think that if everything isn't perfect in that 3-4 year study it's a bit of a drag.

Shino

In France is free :)

Bergamot

At the school I went to, it was roughly $7000 per year for state residents, including room and board. For non state residents, it was many times more.

Minisweeper

Absolute fucking fortune.

In the UK from september onwards (they just introduced the fees) it will be £3k/year for nearly all unis (the government want to increase this in a few years) for tuition. Halls range from £50-£100 per week depending if it's self catered or not. Then there's books and other miscellaneous costs.
I'm a few months away from starting uni and I'm having a tough time deciding whether or not to bother. Due to our 'high' family income I wont get any grants. The tuition fees are part of a government scheme which I have to pay back when i start earning more than £15k/year (it comes straight out my wages like tax). The rest of the money I have to take as a loan.
I recon for a 3 year course (I'd probably do 4) I'm looking forward to a total debt of around £30k by the time i'm finished. That's closer to 45kEuro or $60k. Obviously there are structures in place to help pay it back (student loans are very low interest) but that's still a ton of debt to be in when you're walking out into the world not guaranteed a job or anything. Especially when the housing market in the UK is so crazy.

So yeah, I'm really not atall sure whether I'm best checking out the job market. I recon once my exams are over (3 weeks today and i havent even started revising...whoops) I'm gonna send my cv to a ton of places and see what sort of offers I get. I might work for a year and put as much money as possible aside then go to Uni next time round. Unless by then I'm on £50k a year (unlikely). *puts thinking cap on

jeffbax

Mine is like... $42,000 per year. Thank god I have scholarship money :( I will still probably have a lot of debt to deal with at the end though.

uzi

Hm... guys... I think France and Finland are the next candidates to introduce the fees

As I see the fees in Germany at the moment are extremly low in comparison to english-speaking-countrys, I think it's only the beginning - the fees will be much higher in the future

It is interessant, if the job-salaries in Germany will grow due to the uni-fees, hm...

to Kosmo: 7 years? which study path, jurisprudence or medicine???

Minisweeper

Yeah, what the hell do you learn in 7 years of study?! There are a couple of courses here that run that long but theyre things like architecture and perhaps doctorates.

jakob_r

I studied in the UK and Germany and in England (one of those long courses), and what you (have to) do per term in England is much more regimented than in Germany (and perhaps some other countries), which is one reason why people spend longer studying on the EU-continent. If you don't get a course done you might miss a year in the UK, in Germany, you just do it next semester. There's not the same obligation to do a particular course in that semester. That may be changing now as bachelor and masters start replacing Diplomas in Germany. Another reason, is that many work part-time during their studies. I found studying in the UK quicker but partly because I had grant funding for living costs. I had none in Germany and had to work alongside studies - it took longer as a result. The tuition fees per year in Germany were lower, though. Mini, I think if you've got the chance, you should go for it! University is much more than about getting a job at the end of it and money should not be the reason for not going. I know it sounds trite, but money is spent, gone, whatever you do with it, what you can get out of university if you like it you have for ever. And even if things get tight moneywise, you still get by and it makes you resourceful too.

Kosmo

Alot of studies take around 5-7 years, a friend studies architecture and she said that even when you are studying full on it will take minimum of 5 years, she said that 7 years is the usual time to get done with it. I bet there are shorter studies, but I just haven't heard of them :) I think that study fees are idiotic, especially in europe, growth rate is low and even decreasing in some parts, the high age classes are retiring, and we don't have enough people to fill the gaps and most of the people have low education because of the high cost of education so we can say bye bye to europe in oh 30 to 50 years. My theory is that we should project more attenttion and money to africa, since we have low growth rate, not enough educated people to fill the remaining jobs and not nearly enough working class and it's not helping that we are shipping all production facilities to cheap labor countries, at the same time, there are thousands of well educated engineers graduating from India who take our high education work away since an Indian engineer takes only one third of the salary of an European engineer and which boils down to that we are screwed sooner or later if we don't make the whole world work better than it is. It's not rocket sciense it's a plain ugly fact.

Minisweeper

While i totally agree with most of what you just said, in england we actually have too many people going to uni (well, thats what the government say one day, guaranteed they'll change their mind a few times) which is partly why the fees were introduced (and have worked pretty well, there was a fairly high drop in applicants this time round). We're gonna end up with too many overqualified people who dont want to do the lower jobs and thats where even more indians/etc will come in and take over. It's difficult though, with everyone going to uni it makes degrees less special - so you might aswell not have one. Then again, if everyones got one and you dont, you need a different reason an employer would choose you.

There is no doubt in my mind though that the UK and Europe are heading fairly quickly down in terms of global super powers.

Kosmo

I think that the main problem is that goverments are directing their cash flows to very very wrong places, here in Finland the land of idiotic goverment practices we cut study grants, medical and other goverment backed social infrastructure and still we piss away hundreds of millions of euros for a very expensive army, when we could introduce a civil servise (that is actually quite usefull) and volunteer army, we would cut down the costs of running our military because it would be a smaller organization and we would help alot of postal services, schools, libraries and other goverment facilities with cheap labor from the civil service. But because out goverment is still living in some magical fantasy land where they think that everything is fine and we have more money to spend than we actually have, the major problem is that our goverment is cut from the everyday life of the regular joe who they are here to serve, they have high salaries and look everything through some bizarre statistics and numbers instead of long term solutions and effects to the social structure of the country. If they did in fact think the long therm effects of their actions, I bet that they had acknowledged that we will be in very deep shit when majority of the working class retires and we have only two thids of the people to fill that gap, but having children in this country is ridiculously expensive and education even more so, so we end up with poor education and low growth rate. Way to go supergoverment.

Minisweeper

hah. I think most governments everywhere suck. Did anyone else see that random statistic a while ago (i dont know how true it was, i hope and suspect it isnt, but then it wouldnt surprise me if it was) that said if the US government reduced their army funding by 1% and spread that money across the remaining major public sectors (health, education, transport, whatnot) it'd stabilise the whole thing?

uzi

I US it could be They have huge army-fundings...

I agree with mini to the overqualification, in Germany it's exactly the same problem...

jakob_r

The argument of being over-qualified rarely has anything to do with being too good at anything and more to do with a concern on the part of the employer, that you have set your sights higher and won't stay for long. 'might as well not have a degree' is a bit like voluntarily wearing a blindfold. Maybe having a university degree is not the 'privileged position' it once was (which personally I think is a good thing), maybe too its not a guarantee for a job or more money, but government statistics one way or the other, going to university is definitely still a personal opportunity for yourself. And it's not an opportunity you'll see again all that quickly in your everyday job.

Minisweeper

Voluntarily wearing a blindfold isnt actually such a bad thing. It makes you 'see' the world differently and think about things in different ways.

I dont think anyone's doubting the personal opportunities university provides or claiming it's not a major part of peoples lives, and I know for sure there would be a whole load of varied benefits of going to university for me personally. But this discussion is about cost so when I've been talking that's been my main focus. (someone on the lussumo community not going off topic?! whatever next?? ;P)