Humanist Association of Toronto (HAT) Meetup Group

The Humanist Association of Toronto
http://www.humanisttoronto.ca/

Every Saturday we meet on Zoom to discuss a topic decided upon the previous week. These are topics of humanist interest, from a humanist perspective.

The topic of the discussion will be decided in a prior meeting, usually two weeks in advance. This week’s topic is:

Funding for Higher Education, Introduced by Howard Gibson
Introduction
John Oliver has an episode on YouTube on Student Loans. Apparently, 43 million Americans owe money on student loans, for a total of $1.7 trillion dollars. The gross domestic product (GDP) of Australia is $1.69 trillion. Oliver interviewed a woman who took out $100K in student loans. Her montly payment is $707.74, $643.20 of which is interest. I did not hear an interest rate. I have crunched the numbers. A $100K debt costs $643.20 per month if annual interest rates are 7.5 to 8%. At $707.74 per month, the loan will be paid off in thirty years. Is this a good idea?
We need to understand how university training benefits students, and society as a whole. For most of the modern era in the USA and Canada, university education has been subsidized by taxpayers. If the benefit is entirely to the students, they should pay the full cost of their education. If society benefits, subsidies are appropriate. A number of careers are not available to people who lack university degrees.
Is university the only way to train professionals? Famous aircraft designer Clarence "Kelly" Johnson, famous for running Lockheed's Skunkworks, graduated from Universiy of Michigan with a master's degree. Ed Heinemann started at Douglas Aircraft as a draftsman in 1926, and worked his way up to Chief Engineer in 1936. Both engineers had rules for aircraft design and for running engineering departments. Johnson's are listed on his Wikipedia page. Heinemann's were up on Wikipedia at some point, but not any more. Prior to WWII, engineers took night courses to advance their knowledge. The modern internet makes this way more feasible today.
Can a physician work their way up through something like nursing, rather than going through the post-graduate training? Must a bachelor's degree be a prerequisite for training as a lawyer?
The Ontario Society of Professional Engineers (OSPE) estimates that only forty percent of engineering graduates are working in their chosen field. This discussion is a bit tricky because the engineer's societies are working to reserve the word engineer to people licenced to practise as professional engineers. We need to watch this language closely, for all the professions, not just engineering. Apparently, 75% of education graduates are teachers, 65% of law school graduates are lawyers, and 43% of business graduates work in their field, whatever that is. I am trying to wrap my head around what math graduates do. 25% of engineering graduates, and 15 to 37% of graduates in general, are classified as underemployed. They were working at jobs for which their university degrees were not required. Everybody else was doing stuff requiring a high level of intelligence, trainability, and skill.
For the record, I am a semi-retired mechanical designer. I am a Certified Engineering Technologist (C.E.T.) with a three year diploma from what was then Ryerson Polytechnical Institute. My last full-time boss is a chemical engineer with a PEng, supervising a facility that manufactures printed circuit board assemblies, and that was doing electronics box builds.
Tuition Fees in Ontario Canada

| University | Students from... | Course | Annual Tuition | Remarks |
| ---------- | ---------------- | ------ | -------------- | ------- |
| University of Toronto | Ontario | Arts, Science and other programs | $6,100 | Computer science and management courses cost more |
| Toronto Metropolitan University | International | Science | $36,815 - $36,875 | |
| University of Waterloo | Ontario | Engineering | $18,000 | First year |
| University of Waterloo | Ontario | Arts | $9,000 | First year |
| York University | Ontario | Arts | $7,389 | |
| York University | Ontario | Engineering | $13,054 | |
| York University | International | Engineering | $46,064 | Approximately |

If you were educated in the eighties or earlier as I was, you need to appreciate that tuition has gone way up since then.
Humanist Questions

1. College degrees benefit the student if they manage to land high paying jobs. To what extent do college degrees benefit society as a whole?
2. How many jobs can or should only be done by people with appropriate college degrees?
3. If an expensive college degree is required for certain careers, how can people with limited economic resources get into them?
4. Is there a path into professional jobs other than university?
5. How long should it take to pay off a student loan?
6. Consider that many university trained people such as physicians and professional engineers, are considered to be public servants. If these people are carrying huge student debts, can they risk their high paying jobs to act professionally and ethically in the public interest?

Meet our diverse group, trade perspectives in a free and open forum and learn from others as they learn from you!

BTW: don't be concerned if there are not many RSVP’s. Many HAT members attend regularly but don’t sign up on Meetup. Our online meetings have been very popular with 20-30 attendees.

NOTE: The HAT Forum adheres strictly to the City of Toronto Policy on Non-Discrimination (http://www.the519.org/public/content/policy-files/The519SpaceUsePolicy.pdf)

Our Website (http://www.humanisttoronto.ca/)