I've got about $16,000 owed to the sask/fed gov't, which doesn't worry me. It's the other $45,000 I owe to the national bank of Canada and ITI financial services. (ITI, being Information Technology Institute) I went to this extremely expensive private technology school lured by the promises of jobs that paid in excess of $60,000 USD, which was true until about 30days after my graduation in November of 2000. I managed to get a job paying $38,000 cdn here in Vancouver, but alas, I've just been laid off. The loans I received for ITI (tuition was about $24,000, yes I know, I'm an idiot) were at prime+6% and they have refused to lower that interest rate. I realize in hindsight that this was a foolish gamble, but I didn't see the IT bubble popping until it was too late. Now i don't know how I will survive on EI while trying to make my monthly $835 private/public student loan payments... and finding another job so far has been a lost cause. I guess I'll do it as long as I can then attempt to file bankruptcy, even tho I understand my gov't loans will still follow me to the grave. 
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That's a good question.
Myself, 4 years ago, I went to a job fair
just to see what the atmosphere was like
in terms of what was hot and what wasn't.
I had sent for an info package from ITI,
considering that I was curious. It was $24,000
in tuition....very humongous. And they said
you were obligated to get a laptop. I already
had a Thinkpad, why should I have to pay for
another one, and take out a loan on one? I didn't
wait for the answer. It looked like a scam ..
but then again, Nortel shares were at $120 per
share (post-split, or $220 pre-split in April 1999
or 2000).
So, I visited their booth, a year later...talked
to their rep...which I had already corresponded
with by mail. And by phone. And I had got a photocopy
of TIME magazine's brain drain front cover story,
with hyped stories of 100,000's of I.T. jobs paying
amazingly well in the USA, every Tom Dick and Harry
was going to Silicon Valley to pitch a fairy tale
Cinderella story to venture capital funds, becoming
multi-millionaires overnight, etc.
I listened to what the sales rep was telling me...
needless to say, his sales pitch had more holes
than a Swiss cheese.
I declined.
I decided to go another route...and I have no debts
at this point, luckily, and have been cash flow positive
since the beginning of learning what ITI meant. There
was one in Ottawa, another in Toronto ...my thinkpad
cost me $1,200 not $4,000 as ITI wanted ...and Java
programming, wasn't a necessity. Their IIS v4
and Frontpage courses, I can study myself.
Nice try, but no cigar. Nortel went to 80 cents per
share, ITI went broke, the founder went broke or
close with similar projects, and the whole house
of cards tumbled.
As we speak, perhaps half a million jobs in I.T.
are preparing to get moved overseas, to Bangalore,
China, Russia, Romania, Hungary, Phillipines to
people making $1 per hour (if not, 50 cents/hr)
though taxpayer funded R&D, for something called
Voice-Over-IP.
i.e. taxpayers funding technologies that make Canadians
lose their jobs...their own, and those of their kids.
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