Yes, I have talked about this a lot, but I did find an excellent article in the Globe and Mail’s Canadian University Report entitled:
Will You Have Enough to pay for your education? by Erin Millar
This bursts many bubbles about the ever-increasing costs of Post Secondary education. Lots of great points about the ever-increasing tuition costs and how they may increase in the future, but lots of other critical issues about:
- Additional fees that are almost as bad as the airline industry for added leaching fees
- Costs of residence and living away from home
- Costs of Books and such too
If you didn’t see the hard copy in the Globe and Mail, read it online if you are hoping to go to University or you hope to send your kids to University.
Remember some of my finest rants about this as well:
- RESP you realize it is only going to pay for tuition (if you are lucky)
- University Costs, HOLY CRAP!
- University Costs Up? Really I didn’t notice
If you want more of my rants, run a search on my site (it’s in the right column) for University Costs.
My children are adults (35 & 38) and I paid for the college education. Both my children received partial scholarships based on merit, but I paid everything except for their spending money.
You are a stellar parent, but could you afford it today? The numbers in the Globe article are in line with what I am paying currently. Congrats on the scholarships too, they are not easy to find (either).
Good article, although there are things to consider…I wonder if when my daughter goes pursues post secondary if there will even be text books, digital copies are becoming more mainstream and cheaper. Is it so wrong to NOT pay for 100% of your child’s education? We have an RESP set up for her but after getting out of debt our primary financial goal will be retirement not funding our children’s post secondary. We will contribute what we do and if that’s not enough they will manage through their own income stream, be it job, student loan or scholarships.
Agreed, however, if you read Erin’s piece she explains that the cost of Text Books is actually going up, especially the non-print versions, because they are no longer just printed word and pictures, they are multi-media creatures and thus can be expensive.