"Education Costs" - Deb Milbrath, Cartoon Movement
Showing posts with label loan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label loan. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 12, 2019
Monday, February 29, 2016
Students turning to campus food banks as tuition, living costs rise
Now, this article might be based merely on a poll, but it is still reporting on a hidden, but very serious, problem. Tuition keeps getting expensive & inaccessible every academic semester. Students' wages & their parents' incomes are not increasing accordingly. But the hype of getting an education is not only constantly there but becoming an ever-ringing alarm bell.
So, every parent & family wants their children to attend a good post-secondary institution. Good post-secondary institution also charge exorbitant tuition fees, which in part, is due to governments at all levels cutting education funding. That in turn increases tuition fees.
So, unless the parents have a garden of magic trees with leaves of hard cold cash, children will suffer in getting their education. This is especially true for families which don't have enough income & wealth in the first place. If parents don't / can't contribute to their children's education, then their kids' education is affected even worse. As I blogged last year, that some universities are building luxury dorms to cater to children of affluent families, & at the same time, charging exorbitant tuition fees to poverty-stricken students.
Even this food bank mentioned in this article is volunteer-run. Universities & governments still won't help students, who are in dire need to choose between basic food or studies, with enough support to help them focus on their studies than to worry about where their next meal is going to come from, if at all.
This is the terrible condition of poverty-stricken students in first-world countries; from US to Canada to UK. These countries are considered as welfare nations. These countries will charge high taxes but those taxes are paying government ministers' salaries than providing a meal to a hungry student. Then, that hungry student will most likely get even more burdened with debts to fill his stomach & study.
How can we expect a nation to be productive when it can't even provide its poor students with enough food to help them keep their focus on their studies? How can we expect a nation to produce brilliant leaders of tomorrow when a majority of its poor can't even get proper food to keep their brains properly functioning? How can we expect a nation to expect its youth to become the engine of growth & productivity when that young population received no help, whatsoever, when it needed it the most & now, after graduating, it is saddled with thousands upon thousands in student debt?
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A new campus food bank at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax is part of a troubling trend, says the Canadian Federation of Students.
Similar services have sprung up on campuses across Canada as tuition fees & living costs have risen along with student debt, national chairperson Bilan Arte said Tuesday.
“Student unions keep having to prioritize this issue because their members keep saying that they’re making these hard choices between tuition and their next meal. This is incredibly alarming for our organization.
“I think it really underscores for us the importance of talking about the inaccessibility of post-secondary education in Canada today.”
The federation, representing more than 500,000 members from 80 students’ unions, is calling on the federal & provincial governments to make higher learning more affordable.
Arte ... said the true extent of student poverty is largely unrecognized & under-reported.
“How many food banks opening on campus is it going to take before governments sort of realize that maybe there’s a problem?”
Financial aid officer Allen Wolfe of Saint Mary’s University said he helped set up the campus service after referring students to local food banks on a weekly basis. The plight of an international student who was going without meals convinced him to act.
“It wasn’t until a long interview with him that I realized he wasn’t eating,” Wolfe said in a telephone interview. “He was starving, basically, but still maintaining perfect grades.
“That’s really what stuck with me this year and what pushed me forward to make this happen.”
Wolfe stressed that, like many campus food banks, the Saint Mary’s service relies on volunteers & is not funded by the university.
“There’s no budget line for this. It’s going to be regularly maintained by food drives.”
Maximum student loan limits have not risen in the last 2 years as food, housing & other prices have gone up, he added.
Wolfe said he also sees many young people who never learned how to properly budget for life on their own.
While campus-specific statistics are not available, Arte referred to a national study released last fall by Food Banks Canada. It found that community food banks across the country support about 841,000 people a month, up 25% since the economic slide of 2008.
“We know that campuses are microcosms of the larger society,” Arte said. “We have generally heard and have seen our members report an increase in the usage of their food banks on campus.”
A new poll just released by CIBC (TSX:CM) found that 51% of college & university students turned to their parents last year for help after running out of cash.
The online survey conducted Aug. 13-17 among 1,001 Canadian parents who are Angus Reid Forum panellists suggested 48% of students from families with incomes higher than $125,000 asked for more money, compared to 52% from families earning less than $75,000.
So, every parent & family wants their children to attend a good post-secondary institution. Good post-secondary institution also charge exorbitant tuition fees, which in part, is due to governments at all levels cutting education funding. That in turn increases tuition fees.
So, unless the parents have a garden of magic trees with leaves of hard cold cash, children will suffer in getting their education. This is especially true for families which don't have enough income & wealth in the first place. If parents don't / can't contribute to their children's education, then their kids' education is affected even worse. As I blogged last year, that some universities are building luxury dorms to cater to children of affluent families, & at the same time, charging exorbitant tuition fees to poverty-stricken students.
Even this food bank mentioned in this article is volunteer-run. Universities & governments still won't help students, who are in dire need to choose between basic food or studies, with enough support to help them focus on their studies than to worry about where their next meal is going to come from, if at all.
This is the terrible condition of poverty-stricken students in first-world countries; from US to Canada to UK. These countries are considered as welfare nations. These countries will charge high taxes but those taxes are paying government ministers' salaries than providing a meal to a hungry student. Then, that hungry student will most likely get even more burdened with debts to fill his stomach & study.
How can we expect a nation to be productive when it can't even provide its poor students with enough food to help them keep their focus on their studies? How can we expect a nation to produce brilliant leaders of tomorrow when a majority of its poor can't even get proper food to keep their brains properly functioning? How can we expect a nation to expect its youth to become the engine of growth & productivity when that young population received no help, whatsoever, when it needed it the most & now, after graduating, it is saddled with thousands upon thousands in student debt?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A new campus food bank at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax is part of a troubling trend, says the Canadian Federation of Students.
Similar services have sprung up on campuses across Canada as tuition fees & living costs have risen along with student debt, national chairperson Bilan Arte said Tuesday.
“Student unions keep having to prioritize this issue because their members keep saying that they’re making these hard choices between tuition and their next meal. This is incredibly alarming for our organization.
“I think it really underscores for us the importance of talking about the inaccessibility of post-secondary education in Canada today.”
The federation, representing more than 500,000 members from 80 students’ unions, is calling on the federal & provincial governments to make higher learning more affordable.
Arte ... said the true extent of student poverty is largely unrecognized & under-reported.
“How many food banks opening on campus is it going to take before governments sort of realize that maybe there’s a problem?”
Financial aid officer Allen Wolfe of Saint Mary’s University said he helped set up the campus service after referring students to local food banks on a weekly basis. The plight of an international student who was going without meals convinced him to act.
“It wasn’t until a long interview with him that I realized he wasn’t eating,” Wolfe said in a telephone interview. “He was starving, basically, but still maintaining perfect grades.
“That’s really what stuck with me this year and what pushed me forward to make this happen.”
Wolfe stressed that, like many campus food banks, the Saint Mary’s service relies on volunteers & is not funded by the university.
“There’s no budget line for this. It’s going to be regularly maintained by food drives.”
Maximum student loan limits have not risen in the last 2 years as food, housing & other prices have gone up, he added.
Wolfe said he also sees many young people who never learned how to properly budget for life on their own.
While campus-specific statistics are not available, Arte referred to a national study released last fall by Food Banks Canada. It found that community food banks across the country support about 841,000 people a month, up 25% since the economic slide of 2008.
“We know that campuses are microcosms of the larger society,” Arte said. “We have generally heard and have seen our members report an increase in the usage of their food banks on campus.”
A new poll just released by CIBC (TSX:CM) found that 51% of college & university students turned to their parents last year for help after running out of cash.
The online survey conducted Aug. 13-17 among 1,001 Canadian parents who are Angus Reid Forum panellists suggested 48% of students from families with incomes higher than $125,000 asked for more money, compared to 52% from families earning less than $75,000.
Thursday, August 6, 2015
Congratulations, Class of 2015. You're the Most Indebted Ever (For Now)
As I've blogged previously on how education keeps getting more & more expensive to the point that a kid from a middle class or lower (depends how you define "middle class") has to take out large loans to have any chance of completing his/her education, I won't say much in this one. Rich kids don't have any problems in gaining education, assuming that they are actually studying in colleges / universities & not spending time in multimillion $$$ gyms, spas, & dorms, real estate developers are building for them.
Education & its related industries (e.g. financial services, real estate developers, admission services etc.) have become a very profitable businesses on their own. Education is peddled as a must to the kids today, if they want a better job & life in general. Even though, that's not the case, since, it's the age of networking. The stronger & influential your network, you are going to climb the corporate ladder much more easily & quickly. Merit still has a place but not as much as it used to be, say, even a decade ago.
Governments & other organizations will always point to surveys saying how unemployment & salary levels are different among high-school & post-secondary graduates, but what they fail to show is that how those graduates got those jobs in the first place. Most graduates are heavily encouraged to use their own networks to secure jobs & the better your network, the better the job (better = influential).
As the market insiders are constantly claiming now that the next wave of insolvencies are not going to be in housing loans, but in student loans, since good-paying jobs are becoming scarce but education keeps getting more expensive. So students are graduating with bigger & bigger loans without the comparable salaries to pay these loans as quickly as they can, so they can continue on with their lives.
I am definitely not suggesting that children / people should not get more education. No, education is definitely important. But, the society should not be fed the lie that more education will get you a better paying job, since that's not the case. That would be the case, if jobs were based on merit, & not on networks. But, that's not how jobs are secured, nowadays. Expectations should be straightened out in the first place that "people, you should not expect better paying jobs & a secure life with more education."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The class of 2015 is reaching new heights, though perhaps not the way it had hoped.
College graduates this year are leaving school as the most indebted class ever, a title they’ll hold exclusively for all of about 12 months if current trends hold.
The average class of 2015 graduate with student-loan debt will have to pay back a little more than $35,000, according to an analysis of government data by Mark Kantrowitz, publisher at Edvisors, a group of websites about planning & paying for college. Even adjusted for inflation, that’s still more than twice the amount borrowers had to pay back two decades earlier.
Not only is average debt rising, but more students are taking out loans to finance secondary education. Almost 71% of bachelor’s degree recipients will graduate with a student loan, compared with less than half two decades ago & about 64% 10 years ago.
“It’s unfortunate that college costs are going up & the student aid, the grants, are not going up at the same rate on a per student basis,” Mr. Kantrowitz said. “College is becoming less & less affordable, though it’s still just as necessary.”
Indeed, separate government data show much brighter job & earnings prospects for people with college degrees. Labor Department figures show median weekly earnings at $668 last year for full-time wage & salary workers with only a high-school degree. For those with at least a bachelor’s degree, the figure was $1,193. The unemployment rate also is significantly lower for college grads.
To be sure, the value of a college education varies widely depending the institution & the degree a student acquires. But for now, the investment appears worthwhile.
Parents also are kicking in a big share of college costs. Mr. Kantrowitz’s analysis shows that among parents taking out loans to pay for a child’s education, average debt crept up to $30,867 this year from $29,684 in 2014. About 17% of graduates have parents with loans out on their behalf.
All together, total education debt–including federal & private education loans–will tally nearly $68 billion this year for graduates with a bachelor’s degree & their parents, Mr. Kantrowitz estimates, a more than 10-fold increase since 1994.
Education & its related industries (e.g. financial services, real estate developers, admission services etc.) have become a very profitable businesses on their own. Education is peddled as a must to the kids today, if they want a better job & life in general. Even though, that's not the case, since, it's the age of networking. The stronger & influential your network, you are going to climb the corporate ladder much more easily & quickly. Merit still has a place but not as much as it used to be, say, even a decade ago.
Governments & other organizations will always point to surveys saying how unemployment & salary levels are different among high-school & post-secondary graduates, but what they fail to show is that how those graduates got those jobs in the first place. Most graduates are heavily encouraged to use their own networks to secure jobs & the better your network, the better the job (better = influential).
As the market insiders are constantly claiming now that the next wave of insolvencies are not going to be in housing loans, but in student loans, since good-paying jobs are becoming scarce but education keeps getting more expensive. So students are graduating with bigger & bigger loans without the comparable salaries to pay these loans as quickly as they can, so they can continue on with their lives.
I am definitely not suggesting that children / people should not get more education. No, education is definitely important. But, the society should not be fed the lie that more education will get you a better paying job, since that's not the case. That would be the case, if jobs were based on merit, & not on networks. But, that's not how jobs are secured, nowadays. Expectations should be straightened out in the first place that "people, you should not expect better paying jobs & a secure life with more education."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The class of 2015 is reaching new heights, though perhaps not the way it had hoped.
College graduates this year are leaving school as the most indebted class ever, a title they’ll hold exclusively for all of about 12 months if current trends hold.
The average class of 2015 graduate with student-loan debt will have to pay back a little more than $35,000, according to an analysis of government data by Mark Kantrowitz, publisher at Edvisors, a group of websites about planning & paying for college. Even adjusted for inflation, that’s still more than twice the amount borrowers had to pay back two decades earlier.
Not only is average debt rising, but more students are taking out loans to finance secondary education. Almost 71% of bachelor’s degree recipients will graduate with a student loan, compared with less than half two decades ago & about 64% 10 years ago.
“It’s unfortunate that college costs are going up & the student aid, the grants, are not going up at the same rate on a per student basis,” Mr. Kantrowitz said. “College is becoming less & less affordable, though it’s still just as necessary.”
Indeed, separate government data show much brighter job & earnings prospects for people with college degrees. Labor Department figures show median weekly earnings at $668 last year for full-time wage & salary workers with only a high-school degree. For those with at least a bachelor’s degree, the figure was $1,193. The unemployment rate also is significantly lower for college grads.
To be sure, the value of a college education varies widely depending the institution & the degree a student acquires. But for now, the investment appears worthwhile.
Parents also are kicking in a big share of college costs. Mr. Kantrowitz’s analysis shows that among parents taking out loans to pay for a child’s education, average debt crept up to $30,867 this year from $29,684 in 2014. About 17% of graduates have parents with loans out on their behalf.
All together, total education debt–including federal & private education loans–will tally nearly $68 billion this year for graduates with a bachelor’s degree & their parents, Mr. Kantrowitz estimates, a more than 10-fold increase since 1994.
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