Can your child afford a PhD?
KEY IS TO PLAN WELL AHEAD
VANCOUVER • With tuition fees doubling in the 1990s and the cost of living in larger cities soaring, students are paying a lot more for higher education than their parents did. But more and more they see education as the ticket to success and are finding ways to make it affordable.
Kristin Matkovich is a third- year PhD student at the University of British Columbia. She completed an undergraduate degree at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, and her two years at UBC with only $12,000 in student loans. With the costs of post-secondary education estimated to be $12,000 to $14,000 a year, students could be facing much larger bills when they finally get their degree, especially if they go on to post-graduate studies.
The key to affording university without incurring overwhelming debt is to plan ahead as far as possible, says Graham McWaters, co-author of The Canadian Student Financial Survival Guide, which recently went on sale. The biggest question facing students is how they are going to pay for their education, Mr. McWaters says. They have to budget, research where they are going to go and how much it will cost ( will they live at home, will they drive to school) and then figure out who is going to pay for it. “Understanding all the expenses related to each choice you make [is] really important,” he says.
Ms. Matkovich sat down with her parents before university to figure out how she could afford it. “ I looked at how much [ going to university] was going to cost me and if I could afford it. And that was a major reason I chose Waterloo, so I could stay at home.”
UBC also advocates planning well in advance. A few years ago, it started going to local Grade 10 classes to discuss the expense of going to university, says student financial advisor Robert Tudhope. “We are trying to be proactive because we know it’s tough for people,” he says.
What’s really challenging is trying to fill the gap between how much it costs to go to school and how much the government provides in student loans.
“If you are getting a maximum student loan of $10,000 you are going to have a shortage. You are not going to be able to completely finance your education with your loans.”
The most common sources of money are student jobs and family contributions, write Sean Junor and Alex Usher in The Price of Knowledge 2004: Access and Student Finance in Canada, a paper written for the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation.
There are also a number of scholarships available that don’t necessarily require great marks, Mr. McWaters says. He suggests checking out www.studentawards. a site that matches students with possible scholarships.