I am a social scientist. I like the social sciences. I also like the humanities, even if I do find many people’s defense of the humanities to be shrill and weirdly ahistorical. So, naturally, I’m a fan of SSHRC. What I am not a fan of, however, is some of the drivel that passes for advocacy on SSHRC’s behalf. One argument that gets pulled out every once in awhile and which annoys me immensely is the one that says, “Social
In its budget this past spring, Jean Charest’s government announced its plans to increase tuition in Quebec by $325 per year for five years, beginning next fall. By 2016-17, the basic undergraduate tuition in Quebec will reach $3,792 for a typical, 30-credit year. While the tuition increase will keep Quebec students’ fees well below the average elsewhere in Canada, the increases still clock in at 75% over five years. Clearly there is potential for a significant impact on enrolment. So it
The other day I was flipping through public policy maven Charles Clotfelter’s new book Big Time Sports in American Universities (you can get the gist via this interview on YouTube). It reminded me to check up a bit on a subject which intrigued me a few years ago, namely the evolution of sports scholarships in Canadian universities. Fifteen years ago, Canadian athletic scholarships were still both small and rare: even in 2001-02, CIS schools were distributing just $3.4 million in scholarships
One way or another, the underlying argument for differentiation is essentially the story of Adam Smith’s pin maker – that there are increasing returns to specialization. What those increasing returns are, exactly, is a matter of some dispute. For Harvey Weingarten, the increasing returns are essentially “more quality” – that is, for any given quantity of dollars we’ll see a higher return in terms of better research, better teaching, etc. He doesn’t really think you can save much money because
Here’s an important question. Why don’t Canadian governments act as if outputs matter when it comes to funding universities and colleges? There’s nowhere in Canada where the overwhelming majority of operating funding isn’t essentially determined by enrolments (OK, you get goofy exceptions like Nova Scotia where the funding formula is based on what enrolment was in 2003, but apart from that…). But this creates no incentives other than to try increase market share, which essentially is a zero-sum game. It’s
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