I am picking on my Alma Mater again, but I really only can comment on 3 different Universities now: U Waterloo because I am an alumni ; Trent and Acadia because I send them money to pay Tuition.
I usually check out the Daily Bulletin where the University puts out a lot of interesting tid-bits of information. On Friday (June 2013) they put out their list of increases in Tuition for the next few years. As we all read monthly in this very blog Inflation has run between 1 and 2% for the past little while, so keep this in mind with the numbers I am about to quote:
On the advice of Dennis Huber, vice-president administration and finance, the board approved the following framework:
Undergraduate students (domestic):
- Regulated programs (year 1) – 3 per cent
- Regulated programs (upper year) – 3 per cent
- Deregulated programs (year 1) – 5 per cent
- Dereg’ed programs (upper year) – 4 per cent
- Dereg’ed AFM, Biotech/CA. CFM, Math/CA
- Year 1 – 3 per cent
- Upper year – 1 per cent
- Accountancy Diploma (all years) – 2 per cent
Graduate students (domestic): 2 per cent
- Specifically identified Master and Diploma Programs – 3 per cent
International Students:
- Undergraduate programs – 4.2 per cent
- Graduate programs except research plans – 4.2 per cent
- Graduate research plans – 3 per cent
- Specifically identified Master and Diploma programs – 3 per cent
The above figures are overall averages. There are scores of different fee levels, depending on what program a student is taking and what year he or she is in.
How this all compares to other Universities I am not sure, however, I would be willing to entertain comments with links to what other schools are planning on charging in the coming years. Anybody from Quebec (who go to school in Quebec) you are disqualified (your tuition fees are very low).
Punch cards. Ah that brings back memories! My first college course is when I used punch cards. I remember being told to write the card number on the back of the punch card and did so. When my cards were sitting in a box waiting to be processed, the box got knocked off the desk and my cards were the only ones marked. My program was the only one to be processed out of that batch. It was a good day for me but not for the others that had programs in that box!
The next time I went to school, we programmed on Apple 2Es. I have since built my own PCs from bought parts, and my laptop just blows away the decades old hardware from the late 70’s and early 80’s in capabilities. Voice input helps me do the work that would cause me pain to do, were I to have to type it all.
I recently graduated from college, (again), and I saw the penny pinching that my school does to stay financially viable. I also saw how broke some students are, and remember hearing the question asked about how much printing would cost. Some could barely afford the $10-15 per month for the printing we had to do to hand in assignments. The school used massive amounts of paper, and we had to pay for every page we printed. Got to the point where It was not a matter of whether we were asking if there was a charge for something, we eventually were asking what the charge was knowing there would be one. (Rental on the graduation gown tomorrow is $35.)
It costs… It costs… It costs!!!