tigertigr's Journal: Interesting study on student debt (Canada)

I came across this the other day.

http://www.millenniumscholarships.ca/en/research/ekos.html

Key findings:

• Student aid assumptions about expenditures may be too low Students average about $1,200 each month in living costs and expenditures. This is approximately 20% higher than the current assumptions built into the need assessment formulas relied upon by government student aid programs.
• Education is the greatest cost a student faces The greatest cost faced by all students is tuition and education-related fees (24%), followed by accommodation (15%), transportation (12%), food (11%) and debt payments (8%).
• Students receiving family support are no better off from month to month but end up with less student debt Students who need to own a car must work more to pay for it
• Older students accumulate substantially large debts, and a large proportion of this debt is private
• Eighty-nine per cent of students aged 26 or older have government debt, private debt, or both, with an average value of $20,500. Sixty per cent of students in this age bracket have government debt averaging $18,700, while 43% have private debt averaging $13,300.