Athabasca U - MS Information Systems

[bjcheung77]

I noticed the Canadian dollar vs the US dollar has gone down to roughly 1.4 or something along those lines... 
I think it's cheaper this time to study online at a Canadian Univ that also is Regionally Accredited.  

This program has 13 courses and it's $1,710 Canadian per course, the total is $22,230 Canadian and when converted it's... 
Blasted... blah, $15,875 USD, a bit more expensive than I thought, a MOOC partner degree would be better...   

OK, back to the drawing board...  Program Link: http://calendar.athabascau.ca/grad/curre...s-fees.php

[Turkish]

I noticed the Canadian dollar vs the US dollar has gone down to roughly 1.4 or something along those lines... 
I think it's cheaper this time to study online at a Canadian Univ that also is Regionally Accredited.  

This program has 13 courses and it's $1,710 Canadian per course, the total is $22,230 Canadian and when converted it's... 
Blasted... blah, $15,875 USD, a bit more expensive than I thought, a MOOC partner degree would be better...   

OK, back to the drawing board...  Program Link: http://calendar.athabascau.ca/grad/curre...s-fees.php

There's a chance this price in USD is going to get more favourable. And yes, from the way I spelled that last word, I'm Canadian.

My guess is that two factors are going to have an affect on Canadian college/university prices. Covid-19 is likely play a big role here in toppling a house of cards. As every country is dealing with it, Canada is spending money to make problems go away. I don't disagree with it, but it's a lot of money. Our federal government is paying out some hefty money to its populace due to the economic slowdown, the first batch of which has a price tag of 82 billion dollars. Unemployment is surging, businesses are closing.

I understand that almost every country is facing this same issue, however, we're in a unique situation with those two factors I mentioned. When the US housing market crashed, we avoided it by continuing to inflate ours. Mortgage changes, low interest rates, extended amortization, etc... This has resulted in insane prices in Canada and real estate being north of 13% of our economy. The US is 6%. Something like 30% of all mortgage holders have requested a 6 month delay from the banks on paying their mortgages due to employment hardship, but it doesn't delay accruing interest. There was a report done a few months ago that something like 40% of all Canadian households are less than $400 away from not being able to pay their bills. Our debt to income ratio is like 1.77, so for every dollar we earn we owe $1.77 - higher than the US when the housing market crashed.

Wildcard two is oil. 8.21% of our economy is based on oil exports. It's our major export and we can't figure out how to do it properly. Whatever side of the pipeline conversations you land on, the facts are this. We don't currently have enough infrastructure to deliver oil to the coast/border where it goes to refineries. We also don't have internally domestic refineries. It's also expensive to extract from our oil sands in Alberta and isn't environmentally friendly. It's dirty, expensive oil coming from a country that taxes carbon. On top of that, Russia and Saudi Arabia are having a price war on OIL. It hit -$40/barrel yesterday. Yes, minus. Oh, and the US is now a net energy exporter, so our biggest client doesn't need us as much. Maybe we could sell to China? I won't get into it too much, but China and Canada are not getting along, and haven't been since we arrested one of Huwawei's executives on an Interpol warrant.

Loooooong story short. We owe a lot of money and we expect the velocity of money to slow down. Covid is making us owe a lot more. Our social safety nets have ensured people aren't forced to go back to work early (which I agree with) but it reduces our tax base by an insane number while increasing the debt load. Our ability to pay our personal and government debt obligations is slowly moving further away.

All those items I mentioned above have a common solution. Currency devaluation. I'd wager we'll see the USD->CAD ratio separate further. You might even see Athabasca reduce costs as less people attend due to less disposable income and a reduction in government grants.

TDLR - Canada (people & govt) owes a ton of money, is making much less, but spending like a drunken sailor. Economy will be slower to restart than most. Predicting beaverbucks go into the 60-cent range against the greenback.