Tuesday, May 10, 2005



Just had a class with my one student who has 4 kids. We discussed education money.
This guy has to save so much money for his kids education that when he has a holiday he reads a book by rechargeable battery light during the day because electricity is 40% cheaper at night. His entire house is run off electricity - no gas anywhere - hot water, cooking, everything is electricity. With 4 kids in the house he has an electricity bill of about 100$ a month.
-My wife is very strong.

Here in Japan the government pays for education up to grade 9. Basically. Uniforms are the parents responsibility. From grade 9 to grade 12 you have to choose between a private or a public high school, only problem is that the child also has to be accepted. To be accepted they have to do major tests so extreme that 12 year olds spend their every waking hour and weekends glued to books or in the Juku's (cram schools).
The general costs that he pays are 150$ a month for his sons public junior high school and 500$ a month for his daughters private senior high school.

This led in to the cost of university. Again there is private and public. In my personal opinion they are all private and useless. That and there are jobs out there that only look at what school you went to and not your actual grades. They will hire someone who went to Tokyo University over Shizuoka university even though the Tokyo guy is a total moron. Basically, a public university will cost around 3000$ a year for school and transportation, housing costs not included. A private university can cost somewhere between 7 to 10,000$ a year, again housing not included.

Please tell me that Canada is not this expensive!!!!

I was freaking out to dad about this the other day. I am in constant thought about JiXiang's university education. I never completed and money was one of the factors that always kept me a little on a personal mental hold when it came to education. I really would like her to finish at something.
Dad was telling me about new savings plans that the bank and government now offers that I should probably start when I get to Canada.

I mentioned this to my students. He said that there is something like that here that he started, but there is no government involvement. It is a private bank. He also mentioned that as he is a Sumitomo employee his children can receive Sumitomo educational money.
There is a catch though.
If the kids receive Sumitomo money they must then become Sumitomo employees for a set number of years. If they dont they have to pay back the money as if it was a loan.
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Posted by (Top)Andrea::5/10/2005 :: 1 Comments:

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