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I think there's another dimension to income inequality that ends up favouring free tuition for all, rather than needs-based free tuition. With far fewer rich students who would pay than poor students who would benefit, I'd think it possible that the administrative costs of ensuring tuition only went to the needy might surpass the revenue generated by paying students. As well, unconditional free tuition saves everybody the time that would be spent on paperwork and requesting tuition. It may even only be a few hours, but across the education system that's weeks and weeks of wasted time to prove every applicant's need. Also, it would damage future conservatives' ability to say "job-creating families subsidize thousands of ~worthless humanities degrees~",not that that wouldn't happen regardless.
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Mar 23, 2016 05:12
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The cost of education in our current system is crazy expensive and I think it's pretty unlikely you could find enough savings in the removal of administrative costs to make up for that. Money that goes to universally free tuition is money that doesn't go somewhere else where it does far more good. It's all speculative anyway of course because it's never going to happen.
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Mar 23, 2016 05:20
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Jordan7hm posted:The cost of education in our current system is crazy expensive and I think it's pretty unlikely you could find enough savings in the removal of administrative costs to make up for that. Ban all corporate sponsorship of R&D and treat it like a government VC firm where any profit is just reinvested. We are going into deficit anyways....
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Mar 23, 2016 05:26
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So, how many of you continue to identify as Liberal voters now that every single one of Justins promises made in October 2015 is now broken ? Over 60% of education dollars go to Administration or Tenure, very little of the NSRC budget actually goes to R&D. Over half of this budget went towards 3 major liberal lobby firm's, of which the municipal and federal universities were the biggest donors behind Bombardier & SNC last election. Isn't it surreal how similar Liberal cronyism mirrors Chicago style politics?
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Mar 23, 2016 05:58
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Hal_2005 posted:Over 60% of education dollars go to Administration or Tenure, very little of the NSRC budget actually goes to R&D. What does your legal counsel have to say about your equation of tenure with a lack of research?
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Mar 23, 2016 06:00
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Hal_2005 posted:So, how many of you continue to identify as Liberal voters now that every single one of Justins promises made in October 2015 is now broken ? Uhh, hyperbole much?  https://www.trudeaumetre.ca/
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Mar 23, 2016 06:45
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In the real world there is no trade off between free education and other spending priorities, unless one of your priorities is keeping income taxes low. Plenty of European countries offer free tuition to their citizens and even to foreign nationals, and the results are highly beneficial for all involved. Increasing the universal benefits available to the public is by far the most historically reliable way to build and maintain a happy and prosperous society with a relatively even distribution of wealth. Helsing fucked around with this message at 07:25 on Mar 23, 2016 |
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Mar 23, 2016 06:46
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Hal_2005 posted:Over 60% of education dollars go to Administration or Tenure, very little of the NSRC budget actually goes to R&D. Over half of this budget went towards 3 major liberal lobby firm's, of which the municipal and federal universities were the biggest donors behind Bombardier & SNC last election. Isn't it surreal how similar Liberal cronyism mirrors Chicago style politics? What the gently caress are you talking about? Which of the 60% of NSERC's budget is administration? What do you mean by "Tenure"? You mean funding for Canada research chairs, which pretty much all goes to pay for students, postdocs, sometimes equipment and travel, and basically nothing that doesn't support R&D? What exactly do you think the Liberals have changed at NSERC over the last 100 days? Most of NSERC's funding is going to projects that were awarded while the Conservatives were in power. They literally can't divert "60%" of their funds to administration and whatever the gently caress you think tenure is. Since you're such a lazy lying disingenuous sack of poo poo, I'll spend 5 minutes of effort to break down NSERC's budget for you: Total $1,063,174,249 Program 1.1 - People: Research Talent $276,073,435 Sub-program 1.1.1: Science and Engineering Promotion Promotion $6,315,892 Sub-program 1.1.2: Scholarships and Fellowships $77,554,283 Sub-program 1.1.3: Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarships $43,608,026 Sub-program 1.1.4: Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships $8,551,597 Sub-program 1.1.5: Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships $3,632,637 Sub-program 1.1.6: Canada Research Chairs $118,211,000 Sub-program 1.1.7: Canada Excellence Research Chairs $18,200,000 2.3% of that is promotion, the rest goes directly to scholarships and grants for R&D. Program 1.2 – Discovery: Advancement of Knowledge $394,168,765 Sub-program 1.2.1: Discovery Research $379,408,043 Sub-program 1.2.2: Research Equipment and Infrastructure $14,760,722 A small amount of this goes to equipment and virtually all of the rest to discovery grants to fund... you guessed it, R&D. Program 1.3 – Innovation: Research Partnerships $369,062,488 Sub-program 1.3.1: Research in Strategic Areas $98,841,253 Sub-program 1.3.2: Industry-driven Collaborative Research and Development $141,109,980 Sub-program 1.3.3: Networks of Centres of Excellence $41,879,201 Sub-program 1.3.4: Training in Industry $27,933,431 Sub-program 1.3.5: Commercialization of Research $9,562,730 Sub-program 1.3.6: College and Community Innovation $49,735,893 I don't know what half of this poo poo is, but guess who's responsible for shifting NSERC priorities from funding basic research to "industry partnerships"? Also, that's still less than 35% of NSERC's budget. Even if this all went to "three Liberal lobby firms", you're 15% short of justifying your ridiculous bullshit. Internal Services $23,869,561 There are 378 FTEs employed by NSERC - 172 in internal services. Let's say that's 200 employees x $100k + all of the internal services budget, which adds up to around $45M. So less than 5% of the budget goes to administration, even assuming that all of the employees outside of internal services do nothing but admin.
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Mar 23, 2016 07:39
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Beyond trashing Hal's idiocy, you'll notice that $30M to NSERC is a 2.8% increase, which is probably going be around inflation+1% this year. So while it's better than nothing, it may not make up for the Conservative cuts. Actually the latest report said 2014-15 spending would be $1.085B, so it depends on what this $30M increase is relative to. Even that 1.085B figure is basically the same level funding was at in 2011-12, so NSERC has been treading water for years now.cowofwar posted:I can't find the exact article I want but this covers the general idea. $100k is barely enough to hire a postdoc for 1-1.5 years, though. I don't think more $100k grants is going to solve anything other than paying for more grad students who won't be able to find jobs in their field anyways - perhaps one postdoc, but hardly anything more beyond that. What Canada needs is more funding for postdocs and longer-term researcher positions (5-10 year contracts), which barely exist outside of a few national labs. It's also stupid that the NSERC PDF can go towards paying for Canadian graduates to top up their external grants in the US and Europe. What's the point of that? I can't think of any other national postdoctoral funding program that pays their promising graduates to work outside of the country and in all likelihood not come back. blah_blah posted:The tri-council system actually is a lot more equitable than e.g. what you would find in the US with the NSF/NIH/etc when it comes to grant money distribution (America sure does love financial inequality in all its forms) -- and that link is actually to the NIH. I agree that the system of large mega-labs siphoning up all the grant money is not ideal, but it's also not true that there's no correlation between prior performance and future performance. You can argue that some of it is driven by prestige and network effects, but in my field (math), top researchers generally have a very consistent trend of important results and there are relatively few one-hit wonders. The top 1% of the field almost certainly produces more than the bottom 75% combined. Well, I think that finding is relevant for Canada, where the NSERC PDF success rate is ~15-20% at most. I assume Discovery grants are at a similar level but I haven't checked*. I don't see how you can downplay prestige and network effects if there's solid evidence that funding agencies can't actually predict future success very well. That wouldn't be so much of a problem if the success rate was 50% but that seems to be exactly what cowofwar is getting at - the low success rates mean that there's far less of a chance for promising applications lacking in prestige to make it through. The obvious solution is, well, more money. There seems to be plenty to take from the various industry "partnerships" that siphon a good third of NSERC's money. More grad students is obviously not the answer. *actually I'm wrong, the success rates are very high, especially for renewals, but the actual grants are small. Precambrian Video Games fucked around with this message at 08:02 on Mar 23, 2016 |
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Mar 23, 2016 08:00
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Helsing posted:In the real world there is no trade off between free education and other spending priorities, unless one of your priorities is keeping income taxes low. Plenty of European countries offer free tuition to their citizens and even to foreign nations the results are highly beneficial for all involved. Increasing the universal benefits available to the public is by far the most historically reliable way to build and maintain a happy and prosperous society with a relatively even distribution of wealth. Plenty of European countries also invest far more in secondary education and below, and have secondary curricula that transition more naturally into postsecondary education than our own does. I'm not morally opposed to free postsecondary education in principle but my experience with the system makes me feel pretty strongly that it's a very poor allocation of dollars currently. I know that perfect shouldn't be the enemy of good and all that, but investing in education is rare enough as is and I think that we should really target investment there at a level where it can do the most good. eXXon posted:Well, I think that finding is relevant for Canada, where the NSERC PDF success rate is ~15-20% at most. I assume Discovery grants are at a similar level but I haven't checked*. I don't see how you can downplay prestige and network effects if there's solid evidence that funding agencies can't actually predict future success very well. That wouldn't be so much of a problem if the success rate was 50% but that seems to be exactly what cowofwar is getting at - the low success rates mean that there's far less of a chance for promising applications lacking in prestige to make it through. The obvious solution is, well, more money. There seems to be plenty to take from the various industry "partnerships" that siphon a good third of NSERC's money. More grad students is obviously not the answer. When I applied for NSERC PDF a few years ago the success rate was well under 10% (not getting it was probably the tipping point in me leaving academia, a.k.a. the best choice I ever made). In contrast the Discovery grant program has, as you noted, a high success rate and modest grant amounts. It's viewed in many ways as a very successful, sustainable program (whereas the PDF program was basically abandoned by NSERC for an extended period of time and only recently has grown in award size, after like 20 years of remaining constant). I think the Canada Research Chair program has mostly been a success but I'm not as sure about that. The industry partnerships are a complete crock of bullshit and grew massively during the Conservative Party's time in power. The high prestige awards like the Vanier and Banting (which also came into existence around the same time) are overkill and a gigantic waste of money. Two mediocre students from my program, with no future in (quality) research, received the Vanier from my department, making me seriously question their selection process.
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Mar 23, 2016 08:19
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And to end on a happy note, the BBC has a lovely eulogy of Rob Ford entitled "Why Rob Ford was a typical Canadian":quote:Canadian journalist Jordan Michael Smith reflects on the outrageous life of Rob Ford, the former mayor of Toronto. Was an overweight, crack-smoking loudmouth really so out of character compared to his fellow Canadians? Well, I can't argue with that, although I am surprised to see tabloid/Sun-style terse-sentences-as-paragraphs writing for the BBC.
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Mar 23, 2016 08:22
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Helsing posted:You know what's cheap? A barren, sterile existence that ends when you die.  , it could be cheaper, but it's pretty awesome! I feel bad for the guys my age who are visibly unhappy and look 5 years older
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Mar 23, 2016 10:56
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My school is paid for. Any true-blooded Canadian can get that free university too.  Not sure it was worth it. 
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Mar 23, 2016 11:39
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free tuition paid for by taxing the top 50% of earners more is the only progressive option also free accomadation and living expenses based on need, make people from wealthy families pay for it or stay at home in their mansions
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Mar 23, 2016 11:47
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Aren't Canadian universities pretty lovely anyway?
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Mar 23, 2016 11:59
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I got nothing from this budget, I'm going to vote Far Right next time
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Mar 23, 2016 12:19
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Maybe we can convince Ted Cruz to come back when he admits defeat to trump Or convince Ezra to run
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Mar 23, 2016 12:24
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I love the conservatives that scream that 30 billion dollars is ~dangerous~ levels of deficit, ignoring the years that XPMSH ran 55 and 33 billion dollar deficits back-to-back.
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Mar 23, 2016 13:06
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Slightly Toasted posted:Or convince Ezra to run *Flash-forward to Election Night* Levant: "... It's a trap!" *Liberals annihilate Convervatives*
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Mar 23, 2016 13:07
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I want Thing, so Thing should be provided to me by the government.
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Mar 23, 2016 13:07
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terrorist ambulance posted:I
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Mar 23, 2016 13:13
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Ian Capstick was on my local commercial radio station this morning speaking for "The NDP", and he hated the budget because while he's - he actually said this - "socially liberal, [he's] actually a fiscal conservative." He believes that most Canadians most pressing need is knowing when we can get back to a surplus status. Holy poo poo, Capstick. (Tim Powers represented the Conservative POV [because there's only two sides/parties in Canadian politics, right?] and "totally agreed".) gently caress "pundits". JohnnyCanuck fucked around with this message at 13:43 on Mar 23, 2016 |
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Mar 23, 2016 13:40
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blah_blah posted:Plenty of European countries also invest far more in secondary education and below, and have secondary curricula that transition more naturally into postsecondary education than our own does. I'm not morally opposed to free postsecondary education in principle but my experience with the system makes me feel pretty strongly that it's a very poor allocation of dollars currently. I know that perfect shouldn't be the enemy of good and all that, but investing in education is rare enough as is and I think that we should really target investment there at a level where it can do the most good. Yep, I had no chance at getting an NSERC PDF which is why I left academia too. I'm much happier where I am now and actually earn a livable wage. The success rate on those things, plus the fact that you only ever get to apply once, is really harsh. Especially for a fresh new PhD graduate. It basically seals your future. If you get one you've got a shot at doing something big and landing a faculty position; if not, good luck to you because you're going to be on soft money for a long time.
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Mar 23, 2016 14:30
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Vasler posted:Yep, I had no chance at getting an NSERC PDF which is why I left academia too. I'm much happier where I am now and actually earn a livable wage. The success rate on those things, plus the fact that you only ever get to apply once, is really harsh. Especially for a fresh new PhD graduate. It basically seals your future. If you get one you've got a shot at doing something big and landing a faculty position; if not, good luck to you because you're going to be on soft money for a long time. Like anything, grant writing is a skill that doesn't necessarily mean you're a good student or researcher. But I think it is necessary if you want to pursue research for better or for worse. At the same time, if you can put together a proposal that hits on the current disciplinary trends and sounds sexy you have a better shot than a better student working on something more mundane regardless of if it's important or not. Short of one-on-one interviews I don't know how much grant agencies can do to improve the process but I agree that PDFs are overly harsh. In a messed up way it may be for the best because it gets people out of academia where they might otherwise be miserable and pulling less than 20k a year teaching 3-4 classes and desperately trying to cobble enough money together to research and publish, competing for a dwindling number of tenure track jobs.
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Mar 23, 2016 14:39
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Hal_2005 posted:So, how many of you continue to identify as Liberal voters now that every single one of Justins promises made in October 2015 is now broken ? Did you get lost on the way to the CBC comments section or something?
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Mar 23, 2016 14:53
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https://twitter.com/Justin_Ling/status/712639265524547586 RIP whoever it is 
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Mar 23, 2016 15:04
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Hefty update for today with plenty of discussion about the budget.quote:Good Wednesday morning to you.
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Mar 23, 2016 15:04
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So what is the Office of Community Outreach and Counter-Radicalization Coordinater actually going to do vs. what they are supposed to do?
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Mar 23, 2016 15:26
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Seat Safety Switch posted:https://twitter.com/Justin_Ling/status/712639265524547586 Was it McCallum? He looked ready to go at any time.
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Mar 23, 2016 15:28
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It's Jim Hillyer. e: 
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Mar 23, 2016 15:29
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Jim Hillyer. He was 41, I guess he was diagnosed with leukaemia 8 years ago or so.
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Mar 23, 2016 15:30
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PK loving SUBBAN posted:It's Jim Hillyer. https://twitter.com/CochraneCBC/status/712647374615801857 And he had an "unexpected bone infection" last month, which just sounds painful and miserable.
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Mar 23, 2016 15:31
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I'm sure that if he's done or said anything worthy of venomous hatred someone ITT will bring it up but RIP, irrelevant Conservative backbencher. Dying at work in the wee hours, at age 41, is not high on the list of Best Ways To Go. edit: well beaten, and with cause too. Dallan Invictus fucked around with this message at 15:37 on Mar 23, 2016 |
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Mar 23, 2016 15:31
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When I first heard I thought it was Mauril. It's still tragic and RIP
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Mar 23, 2016 15:33
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Yeah, I would definitely not spend my last days with cancer at work. Sad.
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Mar 23, 2016 15:34
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Jesus, dying when you're younger than Rob Ford was. That's not fair for anyone!
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Mar 23, 2016 15:34
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41 with young kids, yikes! How did he get elected with a degree from an unaccredited university though? Studying American Constitutional Law no less.
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Mar 23, 2016 15:37
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Maybe he was one of those lucky ducks who loved his job.
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Mar 23, 2016 15:37
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Frosted Flake posted:How did he get elected with a degree from an unaccredited university though? Studying American Constitutional Law no less. "Conservative Member of Parliament for Medicine Hat-Cardston-Warner" That's probably why.
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Mar 23, 2016 15:38
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Frosted Flake posted:41 with young kids, yikes! He was running in Lethbridge. Apparently he didn't even bother to show up to candidate meetings and debates and stuff in the 2011 election. And he won with 57% of the vote anyway.
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Mar 23, 2016 15:40
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