Hacker News Reader

Comment by Davidbrcz | Hacker News Reader

Raw figures are worthless without taking into account cost of living, taxes and public services (social security, retirement plan).

View on HN

If you have more accurate figures, by all means post them. But it's going to take a lot to span a gap this broad.

For what it's worth, both Vancouver and Toronto were rated as "severely unaffordable" in the 14th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey: 2018.

https://fcpp.org/wp-content/uploads/dhi2018-fcpp.pdf

You can consider things like the cost of health care (usually moot as big companies in the US will pay for all of your insurance costs), and education for your kids. What’s the tuition difference between top tier schools in the US and Canada? What about primary school? I hear many people in the US pay to send their kids to private primary and secondary schools. If you are raising a family in the US those are lots of extra ancillary costs that are higher than in Canada.

There are no top tier schools in Canada. That's one of the problems. There's no Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, Brown, Duke, Chicago, Columbia, Penn, CIT, Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon, et al.

Canada's few top tier schools, are second tier schools in the US, barely. Canada has only a few schools that compare to the University of Virginia, UNC or Michigan. The US has dozens of schools like that, eg: USC, UCLA, Florida, UC San Diego, UC Irvine, Tulane, Pepperdine, Northeastern, Georgia, Boston, GIT, BC, NYU, Tufts, Wake Forest, Wisconsin Madison, Texas, Villanova, Penn State, Ohio State etc.

A bunch of those second tier schools cost $9k to $12k per year in-state tuition + fees. UNC is $9k, Florida is $6k. A four year degree will get you a $85k to $100k per year career as an engineer. You can pay for half of your tuition cost before you graduate with part-time work.

You can go to Berkely for $14k in-state. A degree from there in something of value in engineering, and you can write your ticket. You can easily pay off your education in a few years, and have an elite career that pays a top 3% income.

I'm curious how you define top-tier in this situation, especially tech-centric. I agree the U.S. has more "top" institutions from a reputation standpoint (partially due to us living in a US-centric western world), but they are also astronomically more expensive to attend than their Canadian counterparts. The University of Waterloo is probably not a "top-tier" school by any formal metric, but I would be surprised if it doesn't rival or beat the very top schools in the U.S. in terms of top engineers & tech entrepreneurs produced on a per-capita basis.

Waterloo, for example, has a co-op program that (at least when I attended it years ago) had me graduating debt-free, with built-up savings, and 2 years of tech. experience (including in SV). Many of my peers went to work for MS, Google, or Amazon (the big players at the time) right after graduation. Basically, if you wanted to go south of the border, you could, but of course many want to stay in Canada. I think similar opportunities are there for students from Toronto and other institutions. Accounting for population difference, I don't think the gap is that massive.

Also, Sam Altman is a big fan :)

While researching his piece Bruni spoke with Sam Altman, the president of Y Combinator, one of the best-known providers of seed money for tech startups.

Bruni asked him if any one school stood out in terms of students and graduates whose ideas took off. “Yes,” Altman responded. Bruni was prepared to hear Altman tout his alma mater Stanford. After all it’s famous as a feeder of Silicon Valley success.

But Altman surprised him: “The University of Waterloo.”

No, I don't have them and I don't even know where to begin with as I don't know how many expenses/services work whether in the US or in Canada.

I'm just pointing out that comparing only raw figures is not relevant.

Numbeo has a great cost of living comparison tool. Here's Toronto vs NYC. It shows that you need less money in Canada to maintain the same level of living.

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

I think the big one is this

> Rent Prices in New York, NY are 116.10% higher than in Toronto

It also doesn't account for different things like healthcare costs, etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com