[caissy]

I live in Québec and we have extremely low tuition fees. A 3 years program in any university will be around $1500CAD per semester, so $9000 in total. There are some variations between different universities, but of a few hundreds dollars only. It is the same tuition fee for engineering programs, political science or med school.

When my province came out of what we call the Révolution tranquille (Quiet Revolution), we had one of the lowest postsecondary education population rate in Canada. By creating a bunch of public universities with extremely low tuition fee, we have a whole different picture 40 years later with a well educated population.

[lgbr]

That's not too terribly different from a lot of places in the US. Tuition for in-state students at public universities can run $2,000 to $3,000 USD per semester, and every penny (and then some extra) is covered by unsubsidized student loans which reasonable interest rates. After getting a 4 year degree, tuition did nothing to my pocket book and roughly 6 months after graduation I had to start paying $140/month, which is a tiny, especially in comparison to the higher salaries I got after graduation.

[Loughla]

That's not really accurate anymore.

Without assuming too much, I'm not certain when you went to school, based on those numbers it seems a while ago.

2013-2014, average in-state tuition for 4-year public universities is just over 5,000 per semester, and that DOESN'T include housing, meals, books and other incidentals - it assumes you only pay for classes, nothing else.

Wyoming was the lowest average in 2013-14, at $4,404 for the year (2202 per semester), and under $9,000 when you include housing and meal plan - not bad, really.

Anymore, even with Pell, state grants and federal subsidized loans, students still have to come up with 1,000-3,000 per semester. So, that's where the unsubsidized and parent plus loans come in.

Source - my own institutional research at a community college for the last two years.

[JamilD]

The main difference is that in Québec, tuition for all Universities is around that much. Tuition for a BA at McGill is $2,282.10 per year for local students, and McGill is arguably either the best or second-best school nationally.

For comparison, U of T in Ontario comes to around $6,000 p.a., or $13,000 for Engineering.

[akgerber]

Quebec has low tuition, at least in part, because students are ready to fight tuition increases: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Quebec_student_protests