Our politicians are incredibly short sighted. It’s amazing that the same budget both defunds universities and says we want to attract the “best and the brightest” to those same universities.

Thanks.

Centrists and conservatives don’t have the capacity to understand “return on investment” or “in-direct benefits”. Carney is saving money by not paying the bills, so to speak, and that only works until the first of the month rolls around.

I’m so sick of seeing the research and case studies pile up which show all the easy, low-risk solutions to most of our problems just for those morons to bust in and keep doing the same worthless bullshit.

Universities are non-profit organizations in Canada. I agree that they don’t need unlimited growth, but the consequence of not funding them is a decrease in the quality of education and the country’s ability to be at the forefront of research.

They are absolutely hurting right now, btw. One consequence of this is some (small) amount of improved efficiency, but the reality if this continues is a degradation of post-secondary education.

For example, more and more high school students will struggle to get into good programs, and then eventually, we just won’t have good programs.

You don’t even know the difference between universities and colleges.

The one I have as a client has only built a new trades building and a new nursing building in the last 10 years, both for super in-demand programs. As far as I can tell they’re not overly top heavy in any way.

Maybe certain institutions were being stupid, but it’s definitely not all of them.

The ignorance here is incredible, and reeks of failed students, or people who drank through a 3 year BA in art history. The Canadian Foundation Institute was established 20 years ago to partner with provinces to build badly needed infrastructure for research.

Those “facilities” you are whining about are for research on disease or new technology that is the driving force of the economy. These insitutions are a great net stimulus of billions for new technology and business. New fried chicken franchises are not the future economy.

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The $1.7 B is a temporary measure to fund researcher salaries and research costs. They plan to recruit 1000 into a system that already has dwindling grant support and 12% grant success rates with 30% budget cuts. Even if anyone moved here for this, they will just moved back to the US once funding is restored in 36 months, so all Carney is doing is giving US science $1.7B to generate IP that will be developed in the US eventually, while ignoring scientists and engineers in Canada.

The US spent 4X per capita on science than Canada before Trump, and they have the computing and biotech industries worth trillions to show for it.

You can’t just move 1000 into Canada without more infrastructure because research already costs insitutions money.

Not sure where this fantasy of Professors lighting cigars with $100 bills is coming from, other than very few on Lemmy seem to be aware at what goes on in these insitutions.

Wtf are you talking about. Tuitions have been frozen in Ontario for 8 years. Laurentian went broke.

They’re not, really. Their expenses have gone up to match. The days of just teaching with just blackboards are over.

If all expenses are necessary is another question, though. Someone mentioned administration bloat.

Right? Its more like correcting an income that was taken advantage of in the first place.

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How much do they charge in your province? Tuition is very affordable here in Quebec

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Almost all Canadian Universities (and the ones we are really talking about here) are all non-profit. They reinvest any profits back into the institution to improve their capacity for research. This is why Canada has some of the world’s leading research universities. They are not profiting to make individual people richer, they are profiting to make society and our future richer.

This is starting to change though. There are unfortunately a growing number of for-profit “universities” in the country but most of them are transparently low quality diploma-mills (which is a whole different problem that needs dealing with) and aside from misleading naive domestic and mostly international students and separating them from their money, they remain of very marginal educational or research significance. That may not continue though unless we do something to support our large majority of non-profit universities.

I’d rather see reform, but this is almost as good.

Actual reform would be the way to go.

UofT appears to have done a good job of keeping their books balanced, despite the glut of foreign students, but many others have not.

I don’t know about other provinces, but here in Ontario, the provincial government created the problem. Tuition has been frozen to 2019 levels and they reduced direct funding to universities and colleges. The “solution” was to massively ramp up international student enrollment, which came with a lot of other issues.

The problem was created by Provinces cutting funds to universities and education in general… Universities made up the shortfall by using International Students which was a Federally enabled escape valve.

This has been the game of mostly conservative Provincial Premiers; cut everything and blame it on the Feds.

I do feel for some of the legit universities but from what I see, the vast majority of the money milked from International Students did not go to improve the level of education (barely has moved in the last few years) and mostly went to “Mall universities” which are borderline a scam, all stamped and approved by the Provincial gov.

A pleasant reversal from the usual situation. Like, all the regulations that sandbag against housing are municipal, which can only be overridden by the provinces.

1. No public institutions in Canada pay the pensions of people employed there. The pension funds are user contributed and the mandatory contributions allow no RESP savings.

2. Many departments between education and research have budgets exceeding $100M/yr…you want to put that in the hands of anyone making under $250K? Good luck.

Back to the National Post comment section with you.

Both for this and for healthcare.

The nurses are struggling to get a fair deal while somehow the billions a year put into healthcare goes where exactly?

Not to the front line staff, I’ll tell you that much.

And I get it, materials and equipment isn’t cheap but between nurses salaries and material costs, and the occasional multi-million dollar piece of equipment… I just don’t see where it’s all being spent. Between the middle and upper management, there needs to be an overhaul.

Education on every level isn’t dissimilar.

Hell, most government services need a review, at the very least.

Yeah that won’t happen. Senior admin bloat is like crack cocaine for universities and colleges.

Got that right. The head of our local college was making $400,000 a year before he retired. This is a small town college not a university, and that kind of income is ridiculously high for a college president in a town of 60,000. Thats double what our premier makes.

On the other hand, I did a little digging and compared to other English speaking nation universities, Canada is actually bottom of the list for paying our university presidents: https://higheredstrategy.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Figure-6.png

Oh, there are enough jobs, it’s just that most companies would rather pay one overworked person to pull 60hr weeks to pump out mediocre work before burning out and being replaced than pay two happy and productive people to work 40hr weeks or, heaven forbid, three people to work 30-32hr weeks with a huge bump in moral and producitivity.

We got the money, we got the people, and we got the evidence that backs it all up.

Most rigorous studies show that immigration is to the net financial benefit of a nation but the increase of foreign students in Canada is really just a story of capitalist greed. The quality of education is far too low for the cost of tuition and I’d argue its an extremist capitalist position to expect infinite growth from a nations productivity and to see decreasing fertility as an existential threat.

Now it’s complicated in Canada because social services are funded by the current tax payer base and Boomers are about to decimate the healthcare system as they get older and sicker. But bringing folks over on false pretenses is not the solution to that.

That’s completely false and fabricated. Firstly, foreign students are capped at 8%. Secondly, they pay more tuition, but the institution does not get any government co-funding. Thirdly, in science, students are paid minimum stipends around $30K a year, so space on limited by research funding support, at which Canada is the lowest per capita of the G8. There is a level of demonstrated excellence to get into grad programs, not just a place to spend 5 more years to get a piece of paper.