POLL: How did you deal with the high cost of 'higher' education?

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Well, there is no tuiton of any kind here which means you only need to cover living expenses and literature yourself. I took full student loans for four and a half year which totalled to about 23k € or there abouts. In addition to the loan you also get a grant from the government while studying which is on around 230€ a month which is like a "free" part of your student loans. I also worked a but during my time at university to pay for those extra things mostly partying and some travels.

Bahir, what the hell are you talking about the education not being free in Sweden?! What exactly is it you pay? Do you consider it not free when you have to pay and fix living expenses yourself or what do you mean? You can go into any University in Sweden and apply and be accepted based on academical grounds alone and you dont have to ever pay a single dime to the school in question.

[ December 10, 2006, 14:34: Message edited by: joacqin ]

 

I'm looking out for the me now on that one. You see, to become a entry level production tech at my work, you need an AAS in EE. My work is so nice however, that they give you a 15% pay raise for getting cross trained in a different yet similar career field...(a maintenance tech is more valuable if he can fix the hardware *and* the software of a $12 million piece of equipment)...plus, they are paying 100% of it, so I figure, if I end up not liking EE as a career, I still have a degree in IT to fall back on. Call it career security. I just want something I can always fall back on if things don't work out.

Also, I didn't say that I was going to stop at an AAS degree in IT. If I like it, I might get a second BS degree.

 

Yes, and others have suggested this too. However, I am inclined to think that it can't just be the overly intelligent members of SP who are smart enough to figure this out. Maybe it is not as simple as it sounds. For example, one of the reasons that education may be much cheaper in other countries is that it is subsidized by tax income. Since an American obviously isn't paying taxes to a foreign nation, it would seem more than a little unfair of him/her to benefit from a system in which he/she does not pay into. So perhaps if an American attends a foreign university he/she is expected to pay significantly more than a resident of that nation?

 

Someone at our college came over here from India last year and she wont be going to university next year as instead of £3,000 PA they are going to charge her £10,000 PA until she has been a British citizen for 5 years, this backs up Aldeth's point.

 

No, Aldeth it doesn't work that way (in the UK at least). Regardless of who you are, or what your background is, everyone pays the same rates.

Basically how it works here is that you can get a 'pass' to stay in the UK for 6 months (I'm pretty sure it's 6 months anyway). For longer, you need a Visa. Now most courses take over 6 months, you know what I mean, and most young people might struggle to get a Visa (especially if they're from an underprivileged country). Saying that though, quite a few people come to the UK from abroad to study, or just to stay for a few years. You'd be surprised the amount of young Aussies/Kiwi's/French etc. you see here. Christ knows why they come to Britain, of all places.

@ Duffin - That's odd mate, that's different to what I heard. There's an Aussie I work with who's studying and as far as I'm aware, he didn't pay any extra. I might be wrong though. It's probably a really complicated system.

 

I'm sure thats what she said, maybe its changed in the last few years since you started uni. I know that in Wales or Scotland if your Welsh or Scottish respectively you only pay £1,500 (or something like that) but if your English you play the full whammy of 3 grand. That pisses me off a little as Scottish taxes are subsidised by 10 Billion pounds from English taxpayers money for Scotland's yearly government budget so why the hell should English students have to pay more? We dont charge Scottish students more than us in England, if we did they'd go crazy.

 

Oh I'm not at uni and have never been to uni. I work with this Aussie kid and he studies at nights and weekends. I don't know what course he is doing. Perhaps that's what decides it. God knows.

Scotland are wanting independence. Let them have it I say, and we can keep the tax subsidies we feed into that country year in, year out. They moan and moan about us and are forever giving us gip, I say we just cut them loose and see how they do on their own for a bit.

 

Not if you live in New Zealand and see that there are virtually no Kiwis in their 20s here at all. They are all in England. Makes hiring staff a nightmare. Anyway, they all go to England because:
a) you let us in
b) you speak English (or a strange form of it anyway)
c) you let us work there
d) you pay us 3 times what you would pay us in NZ so we can spend a few years getting rich
e) you are close to some cool places to explore (like Europe) which are too far away from NZ to go on holidays to
f) you don't mind that when we decide to leave and take all our precious GBP back home with us.

 

A bit off-topic, but what's life like in New Zealand? Is a good place to move to? A lot of Britons move to Australia for a more chilled out life, but I never hear of anyone moving to live in New Zealand. It seems a beautiful country to me. How does the quality of life compare to Britain (from somebody who's spent time in both places)?

 

Stacks of Brits come to live in New Zealand. I work with loads of them. I've asked them the question and they say they come here because:
a) they feel like it is safer for their kids
b) they think the schools are better (way to stay on topic, eh?)
c) they can afford to buy a house here
d) they like being 5 minutes away from a beach, countryside, mountainm or forest.
e) they like the people here
f) they wanted a change

 

My student loan is pretty big, but I never bother about it. I'm just hoping that the student loan scam they're pulling here in NZ will be abolished by the time I graduate...which is many many many years from now.

 

I have gotten the same kind of impression, but recently I read about the contrary. Many, many sheeps eating away the land, it said...

Nevertheless, I hope I can give NZ a try in a year or two, after graduating. Provided that I get a job and the embassy isn't a total arsehat (like embassies tend to be).

 

Including living expenses, the cost of my education was well in excess of $50,000 per year.

I took a little different route to pay for it. I spent pretty much all of my free time then trading stocks and founded a few small businesses.

So, in addition to my school work, I was working 60+ hours per week on these things.

Suffice it to say that I don't have any student loans and was not desperate to find a job upon graduation.

 

@ joacqin and Bahir the Red: a swedish education is almost free, but not entirely. The cost (which is very low compared to the US for example) is that you are obligated to be a member of a student union (studenkår). This cost is different from university to university, but I believe it is mandatory (correct me I'm wrong). I've studied at 2 different universities (don't know if KTH is regarded as a university or college or something else though) and that's the rules I have heard on both places.

 

What you pay to the Student Union has really nothing to do with your education. What you are paying for is to enable the student union to handle various activities. Mostly pubs with really cheap booze but also a couple of lawyers and the like in case you happen to come into conflict with your school for any reason. The only reason this fee is mandatory is because the student union once upon a time had very very good negotiators and made it so you couldnt get any grades noted down before you paid up. It is basically just another form of Swedish solidarity/communism depending on your point of view and has absolutely nothing to do with tuiton or paying for your education.

 

Well, I'm not as cunning in the matter as I should and want to be (seeing as this is my last term before being able to go to a university), but when I say that getting an education in Sweden is not completely free, I include costs of living, student litterature and perhaps other kinds (private or special) education that can run the costs up. I include those (perhaps not the last) because without means to cover them, you simply won't be able to get an education here. Why else would there be student loans?

 

I'm getting federal and state grants, which covers the $1200 per semester in fees, and between $400-500 in books.
I also take out $3000 in loans and work part time to be able to live.
Normall,y my mother would help me out, but she went back to school when I did, so we are both equally financially crunched.

I'm currently enrolled for a 2 year A.A.S. degree, but if I decide to transfer to the Unviersity, tuition will go up to $27,000 per school year. I might get a slightly lower tuition since I'm employed by the University, but I haven't looked into that, since I'm not sure I'm going to transfer.

 

in a lovely little country called Denmark, we have this thing called SU(in danish that's statens uddannelsesstøtte) in english: the governments educational support.

wich means that 99% of all educations are free of charge, exept for books wich is about 1000USD all in all for 5 years, and you actually GET PAID to go to school.

you can actually if you meet the right requirements get close to 900USD/month to go to school

i currently get around around 200USD a month, and i have to work as well