What first attracted my attention to this picture was the GoodLife sign, followed by the beams of light across the street leading to the sign. Of course the phrase that comes to mind is The Goodlife. This, in turn, lead me to think of what is the good life, who gets it, and how. Education is usually cited as one of the enablers, yet the challenges current graduates face in both finding a job and then paying off student loans, makes this route less clear.
When I completed my undergraduate studies in the 1970s, as I recall, I paid just over $200 per semester1. When my son went to university in the early 2000s, as I recall, tuition was in the $6000/year range. When I did my graduate degree in 2017 the annual tuition was in the $10,000 range. The cost of an engineering undergraduate degree this year from University of Toronto, for an Ontario resident, is about $14,000. A graduate degree is about $1,000 more. Needless to say, four years of undergraduate studies will cost nearly $60,000 plus another $6,000-$12,000 in books and supplies.
A 2023 poll by Embark found that 50% of post-secondary students have taken on debt to pay for school, with the average student expecting to graduate with $26,773 in debt. a Robertson College survey suggested it took about 9.5 years to pay off student loans.
Add to the debt, there is no guarantee of success, the opportunity cost of time and money that could have been used elsewhere, and a changing job market leaving open the question of which skills will be required in the future. There are many variables in determining whether there is value in an undergraduate degree, that’s why it’s not so black and white.
Embark Student Corp. 2023. “79 per Cent of Canadian Students Believe the Amount of Debt Taken on for Education Can Be Debilitating, New Poll Finds.” PR Newswire. August 29, 2023. https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/79-per-cent-of-canadian-students-believe-the-amount-of-debt-taken-on-for-education-can-be-debilitating-new-poll-finds-809798552.html.
“What’s the Average Student Loan Debt in Canada? 19 Staggering Statistics.” 2024. Robertson College. Robertson. February 5, 2024. https://www.robertsoncollege.com/blog/studying-at-robertson/average-student-loan-debt-canada/.
- This was in Quebec, where tuition fees have been subsidized by the government. Statistic Canada reports that the annual cost in 1975 / 1976 for an Engineering degree was about $497 in Quebec and $667 in Ontario
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