Is Tuition Really THAT Unreasonable in Ontario?

My tuition was about 17k a year before books and rent and food and all the stuff. In total i needed about 30k a year.

OSAP limit. 11k.

there really was no part time job I could get that made up that gap. I was lucky to have a gf that helped me a lot and I was able to get a significant amount of scholarship money. Otherwise I would never have made it.
 
CrazyKell said:
I thought you just misunderstood.

I made a lot of mistakes in my undergrad years. I partied way more than I should have. I bought things I didn't need. But I don't hold anyone else responsible for that. My loans are my responsibility. Although, I think it's a bit whacked to send 18 year olds out into the world with thousands of dollars, no credit history, and no real responsibility (generalizing here). That's a recipe for disaste.r
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I do find it odd when I speak to parents who have kids about to go off to university. Those kids generally: aren't allowed out after 11pm, don't have their own credit card or financial history, haven't travelled anywhere on their own, have never been allowed to drink alcohol..some of them aren't even allowed to go downtown on transit by themselves. And they're sending them to a different city to live on their own with no safety net? Yikes! I mean, it obviously depends on the kid..but man, some parents really aren't very logical when it comes to preparing their kids for adulthood..
 
stormcat said:
Has anyone mentioned that it's not necessarily the cost of tuition that's the problem, but the cost of course materials? I may have 'only' paid $5k/year for college, but I was shelling out $200+/week for materials in my graphic design program. In university, some of my course materials (books, etc) were upwards of $500 per course for each semester. At the graduate level, we were expected to present at conferences, the costs of which were not subsidized by the university. I've shelled out $3,000-$5,000/each out of my own pocket to attend and present at these conferences. And then of course there are the costs of belonging to professional affiliations to bulk up ones CV in the desperate hope of landing a job at the end.

All my years of university and I am not working in my research field. The pay is terrible, and there are no jobs available. The jobs that are available expect you to donate your time. *sigh*
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That's a bit odd...no grad students here pay out of pocket for conferences. Also a recent provincial government letter was circulated to universities mentioning that "ancilliary fees" for courses could not be charged (but the letter contents date from 1997). Ie, if it is above and beyond the tuition fee then any items to be paid for out of pocket could be considered optional to the course, they were not allowed to be part of any component of final marks.

On another topic...I was always taught that university was a privilege not a right. I'm not sure that opinion is the same today from many students and it does mean there's a different attitude. Couple that together with big tuition and the real attitude is one of "customer-commodity-business" and to be honest, that's not entirely unfair as most universities are run on a business model rather than an education one. The first priority is bums on seats to get money....look at the mega-classes at UofT where it's basically conveyor belt education. There's nothing about the educational experience in one of those classes.
 
chiller said:
Here is a list from globe and mail :

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/repo...t-growing-industries-for-2011/article1921518/

that is for canada...

mind you, my opinion is that if you just want a job in a booming industry you go to where that industry is most booming and you'll land... likewise if you pick a philosophy degree, find out where the philosophers go and get a job there ( no clue where they go )
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Surely it isn't so black and white. Not *everyone* can go into a booming industry, or else you're going to have more applicants than positions. Not only that, not everyone may be suited for that particular industry. I agree with your general sentiment, but it isn't as simple an issue as simply following current trends and everything will work out.
 
jc100 said:
That's a bit odd...no grad students here pay out of pocket for conferences. Also a recent provincial government letter was circulated to universities mentioning that "ancilliary fees" for courses could not be charged (but the letter contents date from 1997). Ie, if it is above and beyond the tuition fee then any items to be paid for out of pocket could be considered optional to the course, they were not allowed to be part of any component of final marks.
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I did my MA at McMaster. They did not cover any of the fees or travel costs I paid out to present at the ASA conference in NYC that year. The uni where I was working on my PhD did not cover any of the fees I paid out to present at UoIndiana. Neither subsidizes fees for belonging to professional affiliations. While I received a scholarship from both universities, the one from McMaster was quite small. The majority of my income came from teaching undergrad seminars. That work was also expected of us. The scholarship from the other university barely covered tuition and book costs. No costs of living, no additional academic type work, etc. I actually had to bow out of a major conference presentation in Oregon because I couldn't afford it, and my institution refused to cover a penny of the costs. Then I bowed out of another major conference in San Fran. It really ****** me off. Especially because you're presenting as a representative of your school and department. The more your face and research is seen, the more interest and outside research funding will come in. You're actually helping your department by presenting, but they don't make it easy for you.

Just presenting the facts. Maybe some university departments have extra funding to aid students. Mine does not.
 
short stop said:
Surely it isn't so black and white. Not *everyone* can go into a booming industry, or else you're going to have more applicants than positions. Not only that, not everyone may be suited for that particular industry. I agree with your general sentiment, but it isn't as simple an issue as simply following current trends and everything will work out.
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is not the current trend to be re-inventing yourself as needed ? Personally, I am edumacated in comp. engineering, I did do some IT work in the very beginning. But now a days I'm in Financial Industry ... following the trends seems to be the way to stay employed.
 
invictus43 said:
I do find it odd when I speak to parents who have kids about to go off to university. Those kids generally: aren't allowed out after 11pm, don't have their own credit card or financial history, haven't travelled anywhere on their own, have never been allowed to drink alcohol..some of them aren't even allowed to go downtown on transit by themselves. And they're sending them to a different city to live on their own with no safety net? Yikes! I mean, it obviously depends on the kid..but man, some parents really aren't very logical when it comes to preparing their kids for adulthood..
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Ya and then they are suprised when the kid ends up pregnant or sold all their books for an 8 ball. First year or two of uni is a more grown up less supervised summer camp, if it was so unreasonably expensive as people claim, it wouldnt be such a popular default decision for kids that have no idea what they want to do or ready to start post secondary.There is obviously exeptions to the rule but talk to a few general arts students with undecided majors and youll see whats going on.
 
chiller said:
Here is a list from globe and mail :

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/repo...t-growing-industries-for-2011/article1921518/

that is for canada...

mind you, my opinion is that if you just want a job in a booming industry you go to where that industry is most booming and you'll land... likewise if you pick a philosophy degree, find out where the philosophers go and get a job there ( no clue where they go )
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Can you forecast your education decisions on what may happen to the industry in the next 5, 10, 20 years?

Engineering may have been flourishing in the past and there are places like Fort McMurray where it still is, but there are many people that don't want to move to the ******* of Canada and in Ontario the job market for engineers is still garbage.

Buy chickens?
 
caboose483 said:
Western doesn't do mandatory co-op thing that Waterloo (and i think Windsor?) does. There are optional ones. I did a 12 month internship with John Deere Forestry in Product Validation and Verification after 3rd year but they announced that the plant was closing 6 months into my term. Super.

I believe that the 4 month placements do very little to actually teach the students anything other than office politics and TLA (three letter acronym) systems. I've been in my current job for 14 months now and still feel utterly lost sometimes. In a technical field like engineering you can't really get into anything serious in 4 months... and even in the 12 months I spent at John Deere all I was fed was ***** work.

There are more engineers in Ontario right now than the industry can support. I worked at Inglis Cycle for a year after graduating because the job market was (and still is) garbage. I moved back to Burlington and worked at National Steelcar for 2.5 years, I did not enjoy that job. I took a pretty large pay cut to move back to London and I'm making less now than I was 4 years ago. I'm still a contract worker so I get no benefits, no bonus, no rrsp program. I made more money building fences and decks as a summer job than I do now. The current state of the industry is such that junior engineers are underpaid. There is sweet **** all I can do about it, if I don't want to do the job there are 10 other recent grads that will. Actually there are probably 1000. But I have been thinking about leaving the industry altogether.
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it has been tougher the last couple years. I had to leave the province. I left the auto industry and took a job in Indiana for a few months contract until I got a salaried gig with Bombardier in Montreal. I then came back to Ontario by beating out a few guys for a good job because they didn't want to move from Ontario and were unemployed during that time.

The civil engineers are doing pretty well right now I would think.
 
jc100 said:
The first priority is bums on seats to get money....look at the mega-classes at UofT where it's basically conveyor belt education. There's nothing about the educational experience in one of those classes.
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Sadly that is reflected in the attitudes of UofT students. I can see it in them. I haven't met a UT student who is overall pleasant to be around. Sorry to paint them all with one brush.

I also have to agree with Caboose, I've sent out tons of resumes and still nothing. I've had the odd jobs here and there. In fact right now, I am not doing anything in my field and its crap right now.

Edit:
just to add, I went to a job fair yesterday for a pharmaceutical co. and there were literally a thousand people there. It was at the Toronto conference center and a line was formed around the open hall. The hall was quite big mind you.
 
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RockerGuy said:
Sadly that is reflected in the attitudes of UofT students. I can see it in them. I haven't met a UT student who is overall pleasant to be around. Sorry to paint them all with one brush.
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Don't be sorry. It's true. :p

U of T's a horrible place to be LOL.

As a graduate of their engineering program, I can tell you right now that it's a cut-throat environment in there, and I don't see how anybody would be able to work a job that pays enough to cover tuition/books/food/etc., while maintaining the ludicrous workload and pressure that you're put under. Half of the TA's don't speak english and a good 2/3rds of the profs couldn't teach their way out of a paper hat. And I'm not even going to get into how inadequate my high school education was in preparing me for the material being covered in my first year of classes.

All that crap aside, I think part of the problem is that we've fostered a society that now demands a minimum of a university diploma in something. University is expensive and always has been. IMO, what's unfair is expecting that EVERYBODY needs to have a university eductaion in order to get work. That's just stupid and unsustainable in the long run.

Anyway, here's a related cracked.com article on the matter. It's pretty well written: http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-ways-we-ruined-occupy-wall-street-generation/
 
Jobs aren't paying what they used to 10+ years ago.

In 2001 I was getting $19/h to do a lower position job than i am in now. since then outsourcing and similar actions have reduced the wage. Ten years later that same job pays about $11-$12 now. My cousin was making over $20 an hour in the late 90s, early 2000 as a bell operator when her job was basically outsourced to a company bell owned and she was given the choice to be laid off or rehire on with the company that was now doing the operator services at less than 1/2 the rate and fewer benefits. It also meant she lost all seniority (including the 4 months vacation that she got for working for the same company for over 10 years). the ceo wages how ever have sky rocketed (but that's more a topic of the occupy where ever thread).
 
Flashmonkey said:
All that crap aside, I think part of the problem is that we've fostered a society that now demands a minimum of a university diploma in something. University is expensive and always has been. IMO, what's unfair is expecting that EVERYBODY needs to have a university eductaion in order to get work. That's just stupid and unsustainable in the long run.
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I see far to many jobs requiring uni degrees that really the uni degree doesn't mean much for the job... then the employer says they can't find anyone and the people have no jobs. Entry level jobs where most of the training is done by the company....
 
Flashmonkey said:
Don't be sorry. It's true. :p

U of T's a horrible place to be LOL.

As a graduate of their engineering program, I can tell you right now that it's a cut-throat environment in there, and I don't see how anybody would be able to work a job that pays enough to cover tuition/books/food/etc., while maintaining the ludicrous workload and pressure that you're put under. Half of the TA's don't speak english and a good 2/3rds of the profs couldn't teach their way out of a paper hat. And I'm not even going to get into how inadequate my high school education was in preparing me for the material being covered in my first year of classes.

All that crap aside, I think part of the problem is that we've fostered a society that now demands a minimum of a university diploma in something. University is expensive and always has been. IMO, what's unfair is expecting that EVERYBODY needs to have a university eductaion in order to get work. That's just stupid and unsustainable in the long run.

Anyway, here's a related cracked.com article on the matter. It's pretty well written: http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-ways-we-ruined-occupy-wall-street-generation/
Click to expand...

I have a sis-in-law who is batshit crazy and selfish. She only wants to feed off people, its like a parasite that needs to be terminated. She did well at UT, lol.
 
Flashmonkey said:
All that crap aside, I think part of the problem is that we've fostered a society that now demands a minimum of a university diploma in something. University is expensive and always has been. IMO, what's unfair is expecting that EVERYBODY needs to have a university eductaion in order to get work. That's just stupid and unsustainable in the long run.
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CruisnGrrl said:
I see far to many jobs requiring uni degrees that really the uni degree doesn't mean much for the job... then the employer says they can't find anyone and the people have no jobs. Entry level jobs where most of the training is done by the company....
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I have to somewhat agree with this too. I have a background in teaching both in my past education and experience, but can't get a job teaching without a degree (unless it was corporate training). I couldn't even take the TESL course without having a a degree, though I am proficient and Engrish and have awesome teaching experience.

I have university and college experience, but just with different certificate programs, not degrees:(
 
caboose483 said:
Western doesn't do mandatory co-op thing that Waterloo (and i think Windsor?) does. There are optional ones. I did a 12 month internship with John Deere Forestry in Product Validation and Verification after 3rd year but they announced that the plant was closing 6 months into my term. Super.

I believe that the 4 month placements do very little to actually teach the students anything other than office politics and TLA (three letter acronym) systems. I've been in my current job for 14 months now and still feel utterly lost sometimes. In a technical field like engineering you can't really get into anything serious in 4 months... and even in the 12 months I spent at John Deere all I was fed was ***** work.

There are more engineers in Ontario right now than the industry can support. I worked at Inglis Cycle for a year after graduating because the job market was (and still is) garbage. I moved back to Burlington and worked at National Steelcar for 2.5 years, I did not enjoy that job. I took a pretty large pay cut to move back to London and I'm making less now than I was 4 years ago. I'm still a contract worker so I get no benefits, no bonus, no rrsp program. I made more money building fences and decks as a summer job than I do now. The current state of the industry is such that junior engineers are underpaid. There is sweet **** all I can do about it, if I don't want to do the job there are 10 other recent grads that will. Actually there are probably 1000. But I have been thinking about leaving the industry altogether.
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Windsor doesn't do mandatory co-op... not last I checked.

And you're right that 4 month co-ops don't do much. In my company, you'd barely scratch the surface after 4 months. McMaster pushed 16 month co-ops a lot. It was a great way to pay off your education before you graduated, and secure a job for graduation.

It's hard finding an engineering job. I was out of work for 8 straight months following University, and I have a respectable amount of education (College and University) and experience (tinkering with cars all my life). My friend took up work as an electrician for 2 years before he started working with me, but I look at that and see many opportunities for me to use that knowledge.

OSPE stopped doing entry level engineering pay surveys years ago because it was reflective of what was out there (or so I was told). The first offer my ex received (yes, she was also a Mechanical Engineering graduate) was $13/hr... She didn't take the job.

If you're willing to do so, you can find work in Alberta for a few years and then move back home. There are other options, just don't give up hope if that's what you want to do.

What field did you graduate in?
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