You're going to make up the funding shortfall, right?
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I don’t understand why you would blame universities (calling them college-like businesses), when foreign students were the only option for increased revenue (to even just match inflation) that has been allowed in the last decade. Before that, only tuition increases were allowed, since government funding has been consistently decreasing.
I completely agree that funding for education should be through taxes, but (especially in Ontario), this is the funding that dried up a very long time ago.
Universities are non-profit organizations in Canada (we are not the U.S.) and have been advocating for increasing government funding first and foremost for a long time. Sure, universities have pivoted to fund by whatever the best alternative has been, but otherwise they wouldn’t survive.
The reliance on foreign students was never the preferred option for anyone but the government, and that was only so they could stop funding education. Now that alternative (really a last resort) is being limited by the government as well, so yeah, being pissed about it is reasonable.
Of course a much better option would be, for example, for the provincial government to provide higher government grants for every domestic student and to also provide that grant for more domestic students (most don’t realize this, but there is something called “corridor”, and universities don’t get government funding for domestic students above that government-induced number). These are provincial decisions, btw.
So yes, universities would love to take on more domestic students, and would love for the government to pay for them (and pay more for each), but that’s instead been decreasing for decades. So what’s this magic “new way” that universities are supposed to be trying instead?
In this thread, I’m amazed coin operated lectures have not been suggested.
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Yeah. There’s no way you’re going to get older, wealthier Canadian taxpayers to make up the shortfall by cutting back on international students.
We’re having a hard enough time as it is getting elementary school teachers paid. Universities cost FAR MORE per student than elementary schools. Tuition costs have skyrocketed way faster than inflation.
Making taxpayers pay all tuition costs is the surest way to get universities defunded completely.
Tuition costs have been capped for the last 8 years in Ontario. Is everyone just pulling numbers out of their asses?
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It used to be. Now it’s bringing in people from India who have taken a loan or borrowed from family in order to get into a diploma mill, whilst actually working for an abusive boss in the “service industry”
That ended last year buddy. Foreign students are now capped at 8%. You know who came up with that scheme? The McGuinty Liberals.
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Most collegiate institutions in Canada have been going gangbusters for 20 years building new facilities and just generally being stupid with money, cutting down on tenured professors, loading up on administrators.
Like. Maybe some very poor decisions have been made for which there are consequences.
If they were underfunded and hurting for money then why would we do this? If they’re underfunded and hurting for money now then why would we provide it when they were so irresponsible with it?
There could be nuance to this situation i don’t understand but from my POV our higher educational institutions need to get their fucking shit together.
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 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.
People who complain about universities have never stepped foot in one, like Doug Ford.
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O boo hoo, Universities don’t need unlimited growth. So what if they make less this year than they did last year. They are not hurting, only their unrestricted growth is threatened.
You don’t even know the difference between universities and colleges.
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Are we now acting like universities are poor and aren’t gouging the fuck out of everyone?
Right? Its more like correcting an income that was taken advantage of in the first place.
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The didn’t get “addicted”, they had their funding model fucked with by various levels of government. They don’t choose their fucking revenue models! The state clawed back a bunch of funding and replaced it with international students, and now they’re taking that away. So the result is massive hardship.
They got fucked by a model forced on them by McGuinty, then yanked out from them by Ford. In 4 years, there will not be room to train students as programs retract.
Ontario’s university system has been the only driver of the economy since the 60s producing thousands of engineers and scientists. But does a high school diploma Premiere understand that? Or does he have a personal problem with post secondary education he flunked out of in 1984?
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It’s the perfect crime! The feds create a problem with a solution that’s under provincial jurisdiction…
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.
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It’s annoying the only real choices are business daddy, or business daddy that’s deiniftely a bigoted racist.
Business daddy is telling Canada we are not productive enough, but refuses to fix that with R&D spending. A bunch of oxy addicts with back hoes is not a stable future economy, Carney knows that.
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At the same time, the feds want to
recruit more than 1,000 top international researchers to Canada, with the budget injecting up to $1.7-billion into a suite of recruitment measures.
That’ll be tough if universities see their income crater.
What do you think the $1.7B is supposed to cover?
They’re trying to end low tier colleges just pumping through international students to inflate their financials, and instead trying to poach all the H1-B researchers in the US that are being scared away.
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.
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I think that’s pretty universal, and it’s been the case for decades.
No, it has not been the case for decades.
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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.
The $1.7 B is a temporary measure to fund researcher salaries and research costs.
It’s $134 million over three years to bring doctoral and post doctoral students over from the US, which isn’t temporary, and doesn’t mean it will end in three years, it just means that’s how far out they’ve budgeted funding for at the moment. They’re not going to be doing a detailed budget for these years out from now so it’s entirely likely that program will just get extended if it’s successful.
Then it’s $1B over 13 years in new grants, which may not be as much as the US, but is not nothing and is not temporary.
And lol if you think researchers are going to want to go back to the US or will be welcome back to the US in the short to mid term. They elected Trump on two non-consecutive occassions. If those researchers don’t come here they’re going to the EU, UK, Korea, Japan, India, etc.
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I know people who were qualified for graduate school, but did not get in. Mainly because foreign students pay better. There would actually be a more diverse/enjoyable university experience if more Canadians (say at least half of students) were admitted.
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.
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No, it has not been the case for decades.
It was certainly the case when I was in school, and that was decades ago.
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There is too much bloat. I’ve seen first hand essentially glorified admins being paid $130k + full pension. They need to trim the fat at these places and restructure operations to get rid of all the waste.
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
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The federal and provincial governments have been underfunding universities for decades. Recently, universities were able to start recruiting foreign students to make up for the shortfall, but it looks like that money tap will be turned down. It doesn’t look like there’s a plan to make up for it.
At the same time, the feds want to
recruit more than 1,000 top international researchers to Canada, with the budget injecting up to $1.7-billion into a suite of recruitment measures.
That’ll be tough if universities see their income crater.
As clearly this thread has no clue what goes on at universities, or even knows the difference between universities and colleges, I’ll explain the OPs point.
$1.7B for 1000 scientist is $1.7M each, for 5 years in total. For senior scientists, this covers salary. But now we have 1000 extra grant applications in a system that is funded at 20% the level of the US per capita. This means we will try and recruit Americans, but tell them they will have an under 10% chance of getting any grant money, and that grant size is half a typical NIH or NSF grant. Large projects? Zero. This research has to be done somewhere, which costs universities money. The same universities getting squeezed by frozen tuitions the last 6 years.
So it is a designed bullshit line item. No one will access this because by the time it rolls out to real funds, the US will have reverted funding and going back to trouncing this banana republic. Excellence, why would an established scientists move to a poorly funded system? They will get more done of they just ride the storm in US.
This money goes to cancer and disease research, like lipid nanoparticles that saved millions of lives with COVID vaccines (yes, that came from Canada), or neural network algorithms driving trillions in investment, also from Canada, but we just pissed away that IP to the US for a handful of shiny rocks.
If Carney is serious about CDN productivity, he needs to fund R&D at per capita levels closer to US or China and make sure the result of this research is developed in Canada, not just sold off cheap to the US as per the last 60 years. A decent economist would realize there is tremendous potential return on investment, far higher than subsidies for pickup truck production to US corporations, and certainly more than the 100-150x more we waste on military spending which does nothing for the CDN economy.
This does not affect colleges. They don’t do research and are for vocational training.
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In this thread, I’m amazed coin operated lectures have not been suggested.
Lol. I had some profs who would never have gotten their first loonie.
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How much do they charge in your province? Tuition is very affordable here in Quebec
Ontario is just over $6K for most programs, $9K for engineering and B.Comm coops.
US, many times that.
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Tuition costs have been capped for the last 8 years in Ontario. Is everyone just pulling numbers out of their asses?
I don’t think you’re talking about the same thing. There’s tuition cost in the sense of what students pay to get an education, and there’s what it costs the university to provide that education. You can cap the former. You can’t cap the latter.
