Earlier this year there was a student day of action in Halifax to protest the rising cost of tuition. Nova Scotia has the highest tuition in Canada and that comes with the highest debt after graduation.
The folks at the Dalhousie Student Union put together this great video highlighting a number of students and the (growing) debt that they are facing:
I'm on the lucky end of the spectrum and my undergrad left me relatively debt free ($10,000 give or take) - Thank you Mom and Dad! I also busted my butt working a number of jobs throughout those years to make sure I was the least in debt I could be.
But now I'm back in the debt boat after working to pay it down for two years post-graduation. I'm currently working towards a degree that will allow me to get a job that is needed in every province in Canada - because everyone needs teachers, right? It's a strange situation where individuals need to pay so much to receive the education needed to be qualified to do essential jobs for our population.
The Nova Scotia government (in particular) really needs to get their priorities straight or we are all going to be broke and saying HELLO! to the welcoming arms of cheaper universities in the country.
Great post Ali! Definitely an important issue.
ReplyDeleteDespite rising tuition costs in Canada we still have it pretty lucky, compared to the States. I wish I could cite these sources, but two scary articles come to mind:
1) One I read about tuition costs for law students in the States, combined with tons of private (for-profit) law schools popping up everywhere, and a dwindling post-recession job market meant that the USA is graduating thousands of lawyers per year that have no hope of finding a job in their field. Imagine being that highly educated with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt and no job prospects!
2) I WISH I could remember the source for this, but I read about a few "transition" countries (moving from third-to-second or second-to-first world) that over-invested in education programs, produced an insane amount of graduates, and then had no jobs for them.
Anyway, if Canada needs certain careers (like teachers) there should definitely be incentives to reduce tuition costs and post-graduation debt. I had about as much graduation debt as you, and I felt really lucky compared to some of my friends and cousins.