Dear Editors,
My Parents wanted me to go to University to study some practical thing no doubt. Economics, business, sciences or perhaps medicine. The status especially for a migrant family from Hungary was huge. My son the doctor, my daughter the professor.
The costs of higher education rise annually. With the pandemics influence, lack of staff, the supply chain crisis, there were enough accepted excuses to increase costs, and ultimately students(or parents) debt. In Canada post secondary education can cost above $80,000, depending on what is being studied, if accommodation is needed too. The Higher Education Sector knows it can charge whatever it so desires, as students, particularly women return to these schools to meet their own and parental dreams of career building and betterment. Many Young Men often do not advance in the halls of higher learning, preferring to pursue other lines of education, skills and trades.
The US Student Debt level has reached 1.37 Trillion dollars and rising annual by hundreds of millions of dollars. Canadian Student debt has gone beyond 22.3 Billion dollars, with the average Canadian student debt averaging $26,689. The EU and Britain have similar debt levels. With the inflation rate rising, costs increased, and interest rates intended to bring down inflation inflated students costs and debt dramatically. With the American debt ceiling reaching 31-33 Trillion Dollars , and Canada’s well over $850 Billion, governments cannot substantially assist these indebted students, so they are on their own, or dependent upon their parents largess. Costs will continue to increase especially with regards to housing costs and needs. Most University Towns don’t have enough accommodation for domestic and international students, and the marketplace rises prices daily.
A great portion of this debt gone onto credit cards and lines of credit, all with increasing interest rates. The cost of education has quite realistically driven many students from the sector to pursue other avenues of interest, but what about the debt itself? It is not going away any time soon. Canadian students paying $6,998.00 annually can expect a 25% increase in the next two years. Ivy League Schools prices will sky rocket as they have done in the past. Most students don’t have wealthy parents, or professional jobs to pay for these costs. It almost appears as though a societal transition is happening, where once lower class and middle class students had the chance to pursue their education with hope for a better future. Now parents need to mortgage their homes, use up their nest eggs or win a lottery of two.
“The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal, yet there is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people”(Aristotle). Higher Education is becoming a thing only the well off or brilliant can fathom. Yes, unequal, unfair, but truthful. Money talks, and those who do not have it will certainly have to walk. To the many socialists, equality and race centered activists out there, like flying on a airline with tickets increasing in price daily, so too the approach we will all have towards higher education.
Perhaps we can look to an example presented to the well educated long ago. Aristotle, Socrates and many other quick lipped thinkers of the Greece of old, were able to sit around and chat with like minded folk because they had slaves, and people doing the hard work for them while they lounged about. History is often cyclical, so are we returning to a time when the few attended higher schools of learning, and the majority pursued the trades, robotics, civil service and manual labor?
Sincerely,
Steven Kaszab
Tags
Dialogue, Letter to the Editors, Letters
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