I notice that the thing that's on the table right now is funding for university. Hungary's GDP is about half of Canada's (per capita), based on the CIA Factbook's figures. A few years ago Hungary's conservative government reduced tuition from a pittance to nothing. A lot of other European countries also have either minimal tuition or no tuition. I think this is because in Europe people think reading is good and stuff whereas in North America it's kind of a bummer. I mean, who needs people who read? If people want to educate themselves we should make them pay.

But seriously, if Ontario is currently weighing its options it might want to consider the fact that you need a B.A. to flip burgers (one Globe columnist said that seventy percent of jobs require a BA) thanks to demographics, outsourcing etc. so if we want to have people working and spending money it would be good if we made education less costly. Right now most young people are either borrowing or paying back and if they're paying back, they're spending all their extra money on loan payments and not on cars or houses. Personally I think Bob Rae should be drawn and quartered for suggesting that they pay more.

As to where the money is going to come from, I think you really have to look at the economic consequences if you go the other route and say no to education before you can fully appreciate why this is a priority. I don't know enough about transfer payments to say whether the money can come from the other provinces. But if it were up to me, I'd give up daycare (one of the other things allegedly on the table) for this issue.

I guess my question was more on the transfer rather than what Ontario's spending was going to but that is an interesting point as well. There are apparently better services than in most of the Canada of my experience out east.

Lisa --

And yet we have more people going to university in North America than they do in Europe.

I'm with Rae -- make it free for those from poor families, make the more wealthy pay. Also makes sure that the universities have an independent revenue source that isn't dependent on government whims.

I'm a Conservative, so this isn't why I'm going for it, but ask yourself this: do you want the survival of Ontario's universities to be dependent on a premier's whims? A premier like, say, Mike Harris?

I'm actually with McGuinty on this one, too (gasp!) -- it is long past time for an Ontario premier to stand up and say, hey, this isn't right! Tory -- I never really liked him, I was for Flaherty.

I enjoyed your posts from overseas. When are you going to post pictures?

Re: funding for universities
Diversify, diversify, as we used to say during fundraising campaigns back at a charity I used to work for. Many conservatives are on board for this. Even Bob Rae, who is really a sort of red Tory, is on board. I think it's because it amounts to introducing a measure of privatisation which is the solution to everything as we all know. Personally, I don't buy it though. There are some things that the private sector does well, but health care and education are not among those things. Also re: the new improved student funding: from a conservative perspective, this sounds like a lot of government administration for minimal gain. You're going to need a bunch of people to determine who gets grants and who gets loans and it will have to be based on an assessment of needs. A whole micro culture of bureaucrats will grow up around this. Ew slimy icky bureaucrats. Wouldnâ??t it be much simpler just to do away with it all?

By the way, where are you getting your stats for university attendance in Europe vs North America?
Not that I'm particularly surprised by them: Most European countries have a far more rigorous system of education than we do in Canada or the US, so money may not be an obstacle, but there's no guarantee that every student will make it in.

Lisa --

Once I get the film developed. Though I've lost some of the digital camera pictures, too...

Stats for university attendance -- it's common knowledge that North America has higher post-secondary education attendance rates. (Canada edges out the United States, I think, though it changes from year to year -- 41%--40%, last I heard.) I hadn't bothered to look it up this time. :-) But here's a real dataset:

http://www.unece.org/stats/trend/ch3.htm
And here (the first one is behind a registration firewall):
http://www.csls.ca/events/slt01/riddell.pdf
(Table 2)

As you can see from the latter source, Canada in 2001 was well above the OECD average at 19% university graduates, leading France (11%) and Germany (13%), among others.

With regard to privatization -- I'm all in favour of privatizing some universities, provided that one maintains the distinction between for-profit and not-for-profit institutions, with government grants only going to the latter type. I had a wonderful experience with a private university, and I will in all likelihood be at another private institution in September (unless I end up at Michigan). I prefer having both public and private universities available.

I have my doubts as to whether it is in our interest to have free university education available for all.

1. In such systems, universities are chronically underfunded and overcrowded.

2. I have doubts about whether it is just to spend the tax dollars collected from lower income Canadians to provide a fully-subsidised degree for the children of their wealthier peers.

3. This should involve about as much government administration as the system today: financial aid is properly handled at the institutional level. It isn't all that difficult -- the system, as I envision it, is exactly like the one I dealt with through undergrad:

http://www.princeton.edu/pr/aid/prospective.shtml

It's not rocket science. A simple formula that weighs income and assets (U of T Law now does the same thing) allows for free education for lower-income students and higher tuition for those from high-income or high-wealth families. Parents have to submit their T1.

I want well-funded universities with easy access to education for the poor. I think that a high-tuition system with full grants for the poor is the easiest and most sustainable way to provide it.

I got into huge arguments about this last year with my high school pal who is now the national treasurer for the CFS -- he travels around the country working for a system like the one you advocate. Noble goals, but I think that if you guys succeed, it'll be terrible for Canadian higher education.

If you wanted to, say, cut by 30-50% the number of Canadian students who go on to university, then a no-tuition system might be sustainable. That's the European way -- select the elite and provide for them. But I think it's better to let students have a shot at it.

My example of the difference between the two systems: consider how universities like Harvard and Oxford have diverged since the Second World War, in terms of resources available for their students and faculty. Harvard uses the fee structure that I advocate, Oxford used -- until Tony Blair's time -- the no-tuition system that you advocate.

Ben said:
Stats for university attendance -- it's common knowledge that North America has higher post-secondary education attendance rates. (Canada edges out the United States, I think, though it changes from year to year -- 41%--40%, last I heard.) I hadn't bothered to look it up this time.

Lisa says:
Eighty percent of people who have pals who work for CFS may keep stats about university attendance in their heads but that doesn't make it common knowledge.

Ben said:
It's not rocket science. A simple formula that weighs income and assets (U of T Law now does the same thing) allows for free education for lower-income students and higher tuition for those from high-income or high-wealth families. Parents have to submit their T1.

Lisa says:
The question isn't whether it's hard to understand. The question is whether it creates bureaucracy, and it does. It also makes every child the dependent of his/her parents because it's the parents' income that matters.

Ben said:
If you wanted to, say, cut by 30-50% the number of Canadian students who go on to university, then a no-tuition system might be sustainable. That's the European way -- select the elite and provide for them. But I think it's better to let students have a shot at it.

Lisa says:
So, in your ideal world, people would pay more, but more would attend. In my ideal world fewer people would attend and no one would pay. That about sums it up for me. I think we need to move in the direction of merit instead of moving in the direction of money.

And now I'm going to say something that I think will make many lefties scream. The single most important thing we can do for university students today is to introduce higher academic standards into primary schools. I'm not saying that there's nothing to be said for creativity in education, I'm saying that we've gone too far in that direction. If we don't start putting some academics back in we'll be creating a nation of over-confident bullshit artists.

Bob Rae's strategy sounds very American, very bricolage: provide something for everyone and all problems will be solved. A little bit of privatisation, a little bit of welfare, a little bit of competition. I think it will produce mediocre results in Canada. America is the new Rome. The sheer volume of wealth there creates its own momentum. In a way, it doesn't matter what America does, its success is assured because of its history and its size. Canada is a smaller country with different needs and aspirations. So Canada can either follow along blithely and copy what the Americans do, and like Pepsi follows Coke it will always be second best, or it can make its own way.

If I might interupt, merit is often only exposed at university, the public school system being run so differently and awarding not all types of intellegence. I can think of a number of sucessful persons who wanted university-based careers who would be excluded in your model, Lisa.

I agree. There are always brilliant people who slip through the cracks. I was told Emile Durkheim the father of sociology was one of those (always got bad grades because nobody understood what he was talking about). These people are rare and for that reason precious. A lot of people are completely unmotivated by rules even academic ones and sometimes academics are an excuse for narrow mindedness. In any case, true genius always has a hard time. But I think you could argue that it isn't in fact possible to design a system for such unique people. You would have to design a system for each one and then maybe you'd do away with their brilliance anyway because it could turn out that their abilities were in part the product of adversity. Certainly the current system isn't doing weird geniuses much good. In the meantime, things are too lax, too easy, and too mushy to help the run of the mill dullards. So we should change it.

I disagree. They are not that rare as "the rules" of high-school are for many grinding, demeaning and arbitrary. This is not about genius but the failure of schools to "draw out" (the meaning of <i>ex-</i> and <i>duce</i> in Latin as I recall) capabilities. Considering the university entrants the best is only half true for the most part. The best of the compliant is more the case.

Make that rare and of course precious. Lots of things are rare and not precious: tuberculosis in North America, dust bunnies in the homes of neat freaks, clean toilets in Hungary.

Alan,
Right, rules are boring and blind obedience is not very instructive. I'm not talking about high school, not sure what to do there because people start there as children, but are nearly adults when they leave. I'm also not talking about mere rules. Though a do think a little rote learning never hurt anyone contrary to popular opinion. Also, I think you can probably find ways to let people who really want to go to university in by applying other kinds of standards. What we don't want is a bunch of people in university because they think they have to be which is the problem now.

Fair enough but I am still not convinced that having this level of university attendence is not either neutral or positive on the net even if there are lots of examples of the drifting student or the soft program. For me it is like Koyto. I am not so much worried about whether it causes global warming or not - I just like breathing well and think that helps everyone. Similarly, I like a population that has a pile of people who have spent extra years thinking without great obligation. I think it just is a general boon and I think our sucess as a liberal democratic society is in large part supported by it.

Still I have to wonder: What if blind disobedience isn't so great after all? What if the average fifteen year old shouldn't be allowed to do everything that she or he wants? What if those memories we have of how unfair school was to us when we were young are not memories of unfairness so much as memories of how it felt to be treated like a child when we wanted to be grown up. I know, that sounds parental, but hey, I'm a parent.
I think we've lost track of certain important things like: children need to obey, it's how they learn at least early on. It would be very hard to find the kind of terrific teaching that is required if you have no rules. Also, it's okay for most people to learn things the boring way, it's better than not learning things at all which seems to be the other option.

Oops, I'm falling behind. I agree that having people read and think is good. I wish people would be more willing to do it for no other reason than that it is good. But even readers have to eat and these days reading for a living seems too much like lying around to a lot of people. So I think many would be opposed to it. Certainly, my doctor was always giving me a hard time about post-graduate work. What are you going to do with that degree? Eh? What's all that learning for?

I am not talking about that stuff, blind disobedience or no rules. I am a parent, too, and I am already aware that teachers are human and not a priesthood. Children need to obey but also have to be raised to be independent adults rather than auto-bots. Where the school system does not recognize the capabilities of the student, it should not serve as a roadblock to advancement - especially as well all bear the cost of the later underemployment and other opportunities missed.

Right.

Was that a "r-i-i-i-ight - your stundder than I thought" or "right, how insightful!"

Lisa --

Yes, it is pretty clear that we have two different ideal systems of education.

Nevertheless, I do feel that the Canadian system creates artificial shortages in the higher levels of higher education -- professional schools are another example of this. It's much, much harder to go to law school or medical school in Canada. There are many who would have become perfectly good doctors or lawyers who have their ambitions thwarted by having a public-only system with so few spots.

Agree entirely re primary and secondary education -- higher standards are a must. And this involves -- *gasp* -- allowing people to fail. (Some then pull up their socks and achieve.) So I'm right with you on that.

I don't support making _all_ universities high tuition places. I just think that we would be best served by allowing _some_ to go that route. Even in the American system, there are state universities that provide an excellent education for tuition fees that are around the level of their Canadian counterparts. I just think that in our overly-egalitarian system, we stifle high-achievers. A diversity of institution-types is best, to my mind.

And I disagree that the Americans are fated to succeed as a result of their size and their wealth. Otherwise, why isn't the EU, with its larger population and GNP, kicking their collective ass? (Now there's an image!)

This is a debate that we should all be having in public fora, though, I think. Because the dichotomy we've found -- that is the choice that we all face in creating a higher education system. Should we fund completely a smaller group, or have a more open access -- but personally expensive -- set of universities?

Alas, I don't see any political party that is willing to be up-front and honest on this issue. :-( (Hence my distaste for extensive political involvement. ;-))

Lisa --

Just one more comment re our differing ideal university systems.

Yours makes perfect sense and would work, given the choices you made. Mine makes just as much sense and would work, given the choices I made.

What won't work over the long run is what we're working with right now: a university system that is increasingly open access with much pressure for lower tuition fees. (And with a primary and secondary school system that follows the doctrine of social promotion.) We can't have it both ways. We need to make a choice, and then structure our funding of higher education (and our grants of university charters) accordingly.

Ben:
"And I disagree that the Americans are fated to succeed as a result of their size and their wealth.
Otherwise, why isn't the EU, with its larger population and GNP, kicking their collective ass? (Now there's an image!)"

Me:
Maybe they will.

Anyway, nice talking to you. Have fun at Stanford or wherever you end up.

"Was that a "r-i-i-i-ight - your stundder than I thought" or "right, how insightful!"

Or right as in: I've gotta go now? I had to go.

But I will say this: if we set up a primary and secondary school system in which we make no decisions regarding who is academically worthy and who is not, then that's a very expensive baby sitting service. I think we can do better.

It is not abolutist. You can catch the best and the sad cases in a simple system but you miss the late bloomers. Limited university entry misses them.