The Maple spring

After this year I have two more.

I'm getting college education for free

Hell yeah! I'm with you!

I would be too, but the centre-left party of my country got rid of free university education a few years ago.

Well, some awesome dude wants to remove the tuition fees (or their equivalent) for technical studies here, so fuck yeah.

Technical studies= engineering and that?

Engineering studies, IT, most maths studies, medicine studies etc.

I prefer to call it the 'Tony Blair' Party, in hindsight.

I didn't mean that. I live in the good ol' US of A. I meant that my father is paying for the majority of my college while my mother and I pay for a very small portion. I'm not paying a cent other than my scholarships!

That's great for you.

Not so good however if your father couldn't afford it. Can you get student loans in the US?

Oh, well, I'm a "maintained" (it sounds weird in English), but college is totally free. With the excepcion of books and such.

Sounds kinky. Does it come with condoms and drugs?

I know, isn't it great? Win-win for me!

I do have student loans, which amounted to about $5,000 give or take for me. I'm not sure if the amount is different based on a case by case basis.

Sadly, no it doesn't.

My hopes and dreams are crushed.

So how much is it in total to go through University on your course?

And out of interest, what course are you doing?

Tuition for my college is about $11,500 per year but I got one of the best scholarships which means they pay me $11,000 per year. However, room and board for me cost another $11,000 per year so that's the majority of what I'm paying. The government loans were, like I said, about $5,000 a year so, in all, I'm paying around 6-7,000 a year for my college, minus whatever other scholarships I get awarded based on my merits and such.

I'm going to dual major in Education and History. I want to be a history teacher but who knows, I might decide to change it once I get to college. History teachers aren't the most sought after job in this economy.

Wow, those scholarships are very good, I'm not certain there are any scholarships for University in the UK. You just get a loan, which of course you then have to pay back once you start earning more than £20,000/year.

So it's a lot of money in total, I'm sure you'd be looking at £40,000 minimum over three years, which is rather a lot.

Edit: I've had a look, and it does appear there are some scholarships, but they seem to be quite random and specfic, and you often have to come from another country.

Most of my tuition is covered but I still have to pay about 5K a year but its only a 4 year scholarship and I wanted to go for 6.

All of the scholarships you can get here seem to be only for Russians, or Muslims, or Bosnians or something.