Man, researching school stuff is tough. First I was looking into that Personal Support Worker program, because someone recommended it, and it fit most closely to what I'd done in Katimavik, but I was put-off when I found out it didn't offer a full diploma. Then I found another program, Developmental Services Worker, which is basically a dialled-up version of the same thing, taking longer and offering a full diploma. I decided to look at how many options I had in a course like this. I plugged it into the Ontario Colleges application website and got... 107 options.
Okay, so trim it down. They put a lot of things on here that aren't exactly the same program. There's a bunch of Personal Support Worker, College Certificate courses, which I've already eliminated from my priorities, and there's a number of Autism and Behavioural Science programs... I'll look into that later, but right now, let's eliminate those options... Okay, well, there's only 28 colleges in Ontario, there's still way more than that here.
They put every location as a new option, so if a college has more than one branch, each goes down as a separate link. Now, there's a number of accelerated, part-time, and distance education programs. I'm sure those are all innovative ideas, but let's not look at those right now.
Okay, so I have the same course for 12 colleges across Ontario, and at 20 locations.
Maaan, college is expensive. Not that I have to worry about it a ton. With my careful financial planning (cheapness), and consistent level of poverty, it comes as a surprise that I'm kind of well-to-do. My family's taken good care of me in this regard, and I don't have to worry about running down my finances, but hell, look at these numbers.
Tuition's the cheapest expense. First place I looked was $4832 for a two year program. Second place is $4636. the first one's probably Ontario's most prestigious, whereas the second one is more on the cost effective side. But see, when we're talking numbers that big, the difference doesn't stand out so much.
DON'T LAUGH AT ME! Maybe you've all had University educations that were much more expensive, but to me, these numbers are big. Most I've ever been able to save is $2000, and I couldn't keep it at that height. I wouldn't be able to field even this expense, and it's not the biggest one.
Okay, so I'm not going to be going to the local college, because all they have is the Personal Support Worker course. And I can't really commute because I don't have a full driver's license. I'll be working to have that remedied (enough) before I start my program, but I've got to apply before I can be certain that this would be a plausible option, and even if I did have one, no car. Possible to solve that issue, too, but so many potential kinks in that plan. I don't want to gamble like that, so maybe that makes moving out look like a good idea.
Well, I'd need somewhere to live that would be cheap. Hey, isn't that what college residences are for? Let's look into that.
Okay, so from the two colleges I looked into, College A gives a $5146 per year option, whereas College B gives $4000 per year. That means it works to $643 a month for Collage A, and $500 a month for College B. That's cheap, but it's not THAT cheap! I know where you can get a room in Guelph for $360 a month, or a two bedroom apartment for $700. You split $700, that makes $350 a person if you shared with someone, which is the gist of these residences.
So, you combine the tuition and residence, and for option A it's a total of $14,832, and for option B it's $12,636. And this doesn't include living and educational expenses, which I suspect would produce a sizeable addition.
Like I said, money isn't really an issue, but yeesh. I feel positively guilty, playing with these numbers.
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Yeah, we have the same problem here. College/university is getting expensive to the point that most people can't afford it without taking out a lot of loans, and then you spend year after year paying off those loans. (They also changed the laws here so even if you declare bankruptcy, your student loans don't go away.)
ReplyDeleteIt's a very effective way of keeping poor people poor (with the presidential election coming up, topics like this are coming up more often). Keep higher education out of reach, and make sure that a lot of entry-level jobs require higher education. So you can't afford to go to college without a job, and you can't get a job if you didn't go to college ...
Hmm. Down here, sometimes you can get an associate's degree, use that to get a lower entry-level job, and then use experience to get the kind of job you wanted in the first place. Maybe that would be an option? Because it sounds like for now, at the very least, you could use a plan that doesn't involve both moving out and getting a car, so anything that takes advantage of the local college might be nice if you can make it work.