Grace

Our third scenario features Grace, who is employed as a clerical worker in a small, nonunionized firm. She enjoys her job, but she and her husband are struggling to make ends meet. She wants to go back to school and upgrade her credentials so that she can find work as a bookkeeper. She has a high-school diploma and at 40, she has over 15 years experience in the labour market.

Because Grace already has a high-school diploma, she is starting from a much better position than either Nicholas or Nadia. However she still faces the extremely difficult task of figuring out how to finance a minimum of two years of post-secondary education (see Table 7.3). Because she works in a small, non-unionized firm, she is unlikely to get any support from her employer. Even in Alberta, Grace’s prospects for funding are limited. Because she is employed full time, she would not be eligible for full-time, grant-funded training offered by Alberta Human Resources and Employment, unless she was given special permission to leave her job. However if she is able to show financial need, she might qualify for part-time funding (although this would likely be difficult if her husband is working full time as well). Grace also may face difficulty accessing a student loan. In all provinces but Québec, if Grace’s husband earned $25,000 or more, she would be ineligible for a loan. Moreover, Grace would not be eligible for a loan if the combined assets of her and her husband were over $5,000. In other words, even a modest family income and asset base may prevent Grace from accessing a student loan. If this were the case, Grace may be forced to rely on a private loan with significantly higher interest rates. Thus from an economic standpoint, given the substantial costs involved, for Grace to return to school, she would need to be quite sure that her investment would pay off.