I've been in China for the past two months learning some Mandarin. Pretty fun stuff! and I took lots of pictures. Anyway, I saw this story on the Globe and Mail website which talked about a lobby by the large and research-intensive universities for an even greater share of money handed out by CIHR, NSERC, and SSHRC. The idea is that giving a bigger share to those already research-intensive universities will eventually create elite super-productive institutions. Since I come from a big research-intensive university, this especially appeals to me. It also makes sense. The article mentions economies of scale and critical mass of researchers translating into momentum-- sensible points, but the best point is that such hypothetical money will benefit me (possibly). Gimme money!
University presidents were contacted in the article, and obviously not all of them agreed with the proposal since many of them headed small(-ish) institutions. The best criticism of the proposal given was that by David Johnston, president of the University of Waterloo. His premise is that granting money based on past performance may exclude potential innovation by other universities, for which I guess UofW would be an excellent example since they make the news a lot with all their spin-off companies. Research in Motion, the company that makes Blackberrys, was founded by an alumnus of UofW. The criticisms given by other presidents are kinda iffy though. For instance, President Jack Lightstone of Brock University complains: "This is about tiering the university system - essentially investing in them by divesting in others." Well Mr. Lightstone, your point might make sense if the universities were not de facto tiered. If you asked a person on the street on how they would rank the University of Toronto and Brock University to one another, they would likely place the University of Toronto higher. Giving more money to an extremely productive research university rather than a small university out in the hinterlands of Ontario makes sense to me. Anyway, the research universities already attract a buttload of funding anyway so complaining about tiering is disingenuous since tiering already exists, and it doesn't address the commonsense of the proposed funding change. President Roseann Runte, president of Carleton University, suggests that such a funding change would stifle competition (amongst Canadian universities? the article in unclear) and create an professor-drain towards the big universities. Assuming Ms. Runte meant competition amongst Canadian universities, I think the best rebuttal is that the big Canadian universities compete on the world-level. Giving them more money makes them compete better amongst scholastic giants. Talking about competition in Canada seems almost... provincial. I don't know about her point about professor-draining because I don't understand completely on how professors are hired and tenured, but I doubt a massive exodus of talent would happen if funding were biased to the big universities. Even if it did happen, how is a drain bad? :)
I think, however, the presidents of all universities would agree that increased government spending into research is a good idea. The brouhaha over the Harper government's slashing of the granting agencies' budgets is foremost in my mind right now. Apropos to this, the article quotes one Robert Birgeneau, Chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley, who advocates complete government coverage of research spending to create elite research institutions. Apparently, the UC system gives preferential spending to UCB and UCLA, both of which have name-brand recognition in the world of academia. However, covering all the research spending sounds really expensive, and the UC system isn't doing quite so well with the recession, what with the hiring and salary freezes and the firing and the professors migrating away.
University presidents were contacted in the article, and obviously not all of them agreed with the proposal since many of them headed small(-ish) institutions. The best criticism of the proposal given was that by David Johnston, president of the University of Waterloo. His premise is that granting money based on past performance may exclude potential innovation by other universities, for which I guess UofW would be an excellent example since they make the news a lot with all their spin-off companies. Research in Motion, the company that makes Blackberrys, was founded by an alumnus of UofW. The criticisms given by other presidents are kinda iffy though. For instance, President Jack Lightstone of Brock University complains: "This is about tiering the university system - essentially investing in them by divesting in others." Well Mr. Lightstone, your point might make sense if the universities were not de facto tiered. If you asked a person on the street on how they would rank the University of Toronto and Brock University to one another, they would likely place the University of Toronto higher. Giving more money to an extremely productive research university rather than a small university out in the hinterlands of Ontario makes sense to me. Anyway, the research universities already attract a buttload of funding anyway so complaining about tiering is disingenuous since tiering already exists, and it doesn't address the commonsense of the proposed funding change. President Roseann Runte, president of Carleton University, suggests that such a funding change would stifle competition (amongst Canadian universities? the article in unclear) and create an professor-drain towards the big universities. Assuming Ms. Runte meant competition amongst Canadian universities, I think the best rebuttal is that the big Canadian universities compete on the world-level. Giving them more money makes them compete better amongst scholastic giants. Talking about competition in Canada seems almost... provincial. I don't know about her point about professor-draining because I don't understand completely on how professors are hired and tenured, but I doubt a massive exodus of talent would happen if funding were biased to the big universities. Even if it did happen, how is a drain bad? :)
I think, however, the presidents of all universities would agree that increased government spending into research is a good idea. The brouhaha over the Harper government's slashing of the granting agencies' budgets is foremost in my mind right now. Apropos to this, the article quotes one Robert Birgeneau, Chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley, who advocates complete government coverage of research spending to create elite research institutions. Apparently, the UC system gives preferential spending to UCB and UCLA, both of which have name-brand recognition in the world of academia. However, covering all the research spending sounds really expensive, and the UC system isn't doing quite so well with the recession, what with the hiring and salary freezes and the firing and the professors migrating away.
