Hans Esser at ExpatBriefing.com examines the cost of education abroad.  Here in Boquete we have an international academy AIB  that is very inexpensive compared to most places in the world and hosts over 25 different nationalities.

The cost to parents of educating their children varies widely from country to country, costing anywhere from USD7,891 for state-funded education in Indonesia to USD200,000 for paid-for education in Hong Kong, according to a new HSBC report.

Parents contribute an average of USD44,221 (USD67,502 if paid-for, USD32,647 if state-funded) towards all aspects of their child’s education costs from primary school up to the end of university, says the report. Of over 8,400 parents in 15 countries and territories surveyed, those that contributed the most were parents in Hong Kong (USD132,161), followed by the UAE (USD99,378), and Singapore (USD70,939).

The survey found that parents in Asian countries expect to spend more on education, seeing a postgraduate degree as being paramount to their children’s success.

The report provides an insight into the costs of education for parents with dependent children looking at the financial costs of emigrating. For instance, the report says tuition fees for a two-year postgraduate degree in engineering can be USD26,400 in the UAE, USD21,000 in the USA, and USD19,700 in Australia. Although the report principally looks at the average spend among parents in different countries, it does also look at the relative cost of local education and that abroad.

It finds also that parents in the UAE are most likely to send their child to an overseas university (65 percent), next followed by Indonesia, India, and China (60, 55, 54 percent, respectively). The USA is the most popular destination for overseas tuition, at 47 percent, being most favored by parents in Taiwan, China, and Canada. Australia and the UK are the second and third top choices thereafter.