Why compare it to Stanford? Stanford is an international private university. University of Toronto is a public university, like SUNY at Binghamton. SUNY Binghamton is cheaper.

What I mean to say is: Compare the costs of attending the best Computer Science schools in Canada to the best Computer Science schools in the United States.

Or even compare international adjacent ranking schools. Here's a ranking list I found, you're welcome to find another: http://universityreport.net/world-university-rankings-2011-c...

The mentality comes from a few places:

1. Discussion of US Private Universities like Harvard, Yale, MIT, Cornell, and Stanford, many of which have international reputations and attract students from all over the world, or the elite Liberal Arts teaching colleges like Williams, Amherst, Colby, Hamilton, and Colgate which attract the wealthiest Americans.

2. The real cost of college, in general, in terms of where the money goes (salaries, technology, infrastructure, etc.) rather than the sticker price, which may be subsidized.

3. People who rule out state schools for spurious reasons, as if failing to go to Stanford or CMU somehow means that you might as well not bother at all. (And many other reasons, high school kids are heavily marketed by universities and the kids often make the decisions themselves without thinking much about the finances.)

(I'm a grad of another Ontario public university.)

Yes, there are a lot of ridiculously expensive schools in the US, but not all schools are expensive and there are a lot of places where you can learn about computing fundamentals, algorithms, data structures, languages, operating systems, architecture, database theory and networks.

Not to mention the time-value of money.

(Sorry for the nit-picking, but in an conversation where not going to university is accepted as a valid option, I feel it's important to measure the costs correctly.)