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Comment by dbspin | Hacker News Reader

Wow. As a European I had no idea that Canadian education was so expensive. Was under the mistaken impression that it was largely free, like health care. Obviously much cheaper than the US - which is life destroyingly expensive. But the figures you cite are still pricey enough to exclude enormous numbers of people from higher education.

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it was largely free

It is largely free if your means are limited. I’m in 4th year of mathematics at Waterloo right now and all but $170 of my $4300 tuition this term was paid for by government grants and bursaries.

Waterloo is actually even more expensive for international students. Some that I know are paying ~$3000 per half credit (5.0 credits per year is the norm) and that’s just in mathematics, not software engineering.

> It is largely free if your means are limited.

What 18 year olds have any means at all? Surely everyone passes this means test?

Can't say for Canada but in the US the colleges look to the parents unless the student is over a certain age (most commonly 26).

There's the FAFSA[1] required by almost every college. Many private colleges also require the CSS Profile[2] which is far more detailed and intrusive. Many people agree that the colleges do this for maximizing their profit and/or providing an incentive to go where it's "less than sticker".

Some 18 year olds are not on good terms with their parents and can't get their parents to complete the processes. Not sure what happens then but you'd suspect nothing good.

[1] https://studentaid.gov/h/apply-for-aid/fafsa Free Application for Federal Student Aid

[2] https://cssprofile.collegeboard.org

When I went to college you could bypass this by getting married, and I considered it with a high school classmate. We weren’t dating and weren’t even really friends - she just happened to bring it up in class once and I told her I’d had the same thought.

I ended up going for pretty close to free after scholarships anyways, though she did joke about consummating the marriage so I guess I missed out on that.

They include your parents’ income in your means test, unless you’ve been out of high school for >7 years.

> They include your parents’ income in your means test

I wonder what happens if your parents are wealthy and you're on good terms with them and not estranged... they just don't happen to want to fund your education.

> Wow. As a European I had no idea that Canadian education was so expensive.

It also depends on the province (most funding is at the province level).

> Was under the mistaken impression that it was largely free, like health care.

Ohh don't worry, what they don't pay in insurance fees they pay in taxes and fees.

What does the last part of your message mean? Obviously no one believes universal health care is actually free.

The US spends a metric ton on medical expenses any way so a qualifier for Canadians like that doesn’t seem right.

For comparison in Germany and Austria public universities are mostly free or close to it (a few €100s per year in misc fees).

On the other hand, the majority of US college kids would not be able to get into university in Germany nor Austria.

You are comparing apples and oranges. In the US, the best students get scholarship and aid and don't need to pay either (or at least have the option of free education unless they insist on going to a school that does not offer them scholarship). The poorest students don't need to pay. The middle pays for both.

In the German system only the best students are admitted period -- there is no university available for 2/3 of the population. And it only lasts 3 years. You would also be shocked to learn that the US government spends more per capita subsidizing tertiary education than the German government. Except that we also allow non-subsidized students the option of attending at their own cost, so at least they have more options than in the German system, where University education is simply unavailable to them.

Almost all German pupils that want to can study, the old haupt-, realschule and gymnasium system you refer to is a lot less meaningful these days than a few decades ago (e.g. lots of kids can go to a gesamtschule and still get into university even if they weren't admitted to a gymnasium).

Germany is actually a couple of places above the US in the education index (that measures years of schooling): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Index

Additionally most vocational schools (Fachhochschule) are also free/cheap in Germany and Austria so even those pupils who can't get into university can still get affordable education.

You can study something somewhere, say at a trade school, or night school, but not at a university and we are talking about university education. We are not talking about secondary education or vocational trade schools. Telling a kid who wants to go to university that they can't do that because their test scores are too low but there is a great refrigeration maintenance vocational school that will accept them does not mean that university education is available to them.

In the US if you have a checkbook and pulse there will be a university that will accept you regardless of your test scores. Not every university, not MIT, but Joe Bob State will take you. Universities even offer remedial education programs so those who are barely literate and innumerate can still enroll, stay longer, and graduate from the university. In Germany you would have been routed out of the system and rerouted to a vocational school, which you are lumping in with a university education by using the vague word "study". "Anyone can study". Well, anyone can study at a library in the US, too, but we are talking about admission to university.

You might want to check what a "Fachhochschule" (University of Applied Sciences) actually is. It is not a vocational school in the way the US understands it. You can get accredited Master's degrees there, but usually no PHDs. The line is blurred though, some actually carry out research nowadays, but often in cooperation with another University.

Yeah not sure why this is downvoted. The US has WAYYYY more colleges and Universities, and in many cases there is no filter on admissions for them. If you can pony up 3 letters of recommendation and a cheque, you're in.

Many of these kids shouldn't go to Uni, and end up taking 5+ years to graduate.

In Germany most of these kids would go to a trade school or apprenticeship.

I suspect the engineering tuition is set as a function of supply and demand - the University of Waterloo has a fairly competitive engineering program. For example, engineering at Laurentian University, another public university in the same province, is only $10,000/year.

Still, that's a large burden. There are government programs that provide a mix of non-repayable grants and deferred payment loans to people who qualify based on family income. I don't have too much personal experience with them, but I think the intent (and, for the most part, effect) is that economic ability shouldn't be a barrier for attendance.

The government will basically offer financial aid to everyone and the interest rate on those are really low. My friend got a law degree for ~40k CAD and he got it all from financial aid. Now that he is working, he is paying it off with a comical interest rate.

US education is hardly "life-destroyingly expensive". It's more than the rest of the world, but it is definitely manageable to pay for it yourself with student loans. If you have financial aid (billions of dollars in aid is out there for good students in financial need). More cost-conscious folks can save thousands more by splitting an undergraduate degree between a low-cost 2-year college (community college, junior college) and then transfer in to a 4-year school to complete a degree.

College costs around the world:https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-college-costs-aroun...

Availability of credit does not make a purchase less expensive.

Yeah, it actually gets more expensive because colleges can overcharge you.

Bear in mind those are Canadian dollars, not the regular dollars, so the price tag is always going to be a little more confusing for the non-Canadians.

Waterloo is probably one of the more expensive canadian schools.

Not saying others are cheap, but just looking at waterloo is probably not represtative.

> life destroyingly expensive

nailed it

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