OriginalEmily, I couldn't agree more. In my first year in Calgary, I took what I thought was going to be the most useless class ever, called General Studies 300. Without overstating the issue, the professor of that class changed my life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfwI4VydZzA

First, I love Ted Talks and would encourage everybody to spend some time at their website on a regular basis. Thanks for posting that, Emily.

Creative thinking is likely more important than everything else. Without creativity, if we just followed alfanerd's prescription for education, we'd still be running away from lions or huddling around a lightning-strike started fire. There is definite connection, almost a codependence, between the arts and the sciences. To promote one over the other harms both.

Much of S/F really contributes to science. You're right, Star Trek is a good example.

There are other examples though. If you look at photography from the very start it's been heavy on both science and art. It's where I really learned about chemistry and physics, very hands on. I've met several people who came from science into photography too.

This whole 'puter thing is another example…lots of crossover going both ways.

In the last decade or so I've noticed a lot of environmentalists learning hard science and scientists getting involved in environmentalism. Not just over global warming either, but the whole scope of it.

Don't get me wrong, my brief two-semester stint in front of a class was enough to serious discourage me when it came to the calibre of the students in front of me. While I was trying to teach them third year material, many of them couldn't write, couldn't use math, and couldn't speak. And there's just no way to address that deficiency in the third year, since I wasn't teaching a writing, math, or speaking course.

All I was allowed to do is mark them on the actual coursework. And I reiterate that this was not defined by specific student group boundaries; it's much more of a structural education deficiency, in my humble opinion.

interesting. in any event, the point was though that whether its criminology, psychology, women's studies, or what not, these students are there not because they have an interest in that subject, but because that subject gives them an easy 'in' to the university. they are dumping ground for failures.

hence, iggy's proposal is alright, but i hope it doesnt help more failures to attend universities. it does them and society at large a disservice.

eugenics? You might want to go ask your hero Tommy Douglas about that. He was big on eugenics. So was Hitler, and most of the Progressive movement in Europe and the states, including Woodrow Wilson.

that's right! I went there. Tommy Douglas -> eugenics -> Hitler. Ouch. suck on it.

That you would equate restricting public university education to those with academic abilities with the state's management of the gene pool is disgusting and just goes how much kool-aid you've been drinking.

but i would love to discuss with you how eugenics's disgusting history is very much tied up with lefty icons like the aforementioned Douglas and Hitler.

I'd say the majority of arts students can't write, either.

I helped to edit a newspaper in high school. It shocked me, frankly. People in high school should be able to write. Most just can't manage it. I did some proofing for a rag in university and encountered the same problem. I'm a technical person, not someone who is particularly gifted in language studies. Why is it that I manage to be disappointed by the language skills of most university graduates, including and perhaps especially those from many of the less prestigious arts disciplines?

And in my experience most business and engineering majors are sociopaths.

Yes, sociopaths who not only design and produce all the goods and services you consume, but also sociopaths who pay the taxes to fund your dumb musician friend on welfare.

That's only if one believes that the financial crisis was caused by subprime mortgages.

The collapse of the subprime mortgage market should have been nothing more than a small economic hiccup. The fact that it almost unravelled our entire financial system showed that there were far greater structural flaws than issues within one relatively small asset class.

To get to the root cause, one has to delve quite deeply into how risk was (and continues to be) shared amongst financial institutions.

Historical financial crises highlighted the need for firewalls to be put up between markets in order to contain emotional market contagions. However, being artificial barriers, these firewalls restricted total profit potential. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act removed these barriers in the hope that the result would reduce risk by spreading it around.

In short, the old method was designed to contain cancer to a specific limb, so that the limb could be cut off and the body would continue functioning. The new rules were based on the assumption that we would never get cancer again.

At the peak of the crisis, subprime mortgages were $1.3 trillion and had a delinquency rate of 25%. Even if you assume that all of those delinquencies would have had a 60% loan write-off, which isn't necessarily the case although some markets were terrible, we're talking a total hit to the subprime mortgage sector of $200 billion.

That sounds like a lot, but the total mortgage market is about $10 trillion. Subprime only sounded big, but it should never have crippled the entire financial sector.

I could go to a nice restaurant during the dinner rush, find a table in the center of the room, and climb up and take a dump on it. I guarantee people will be talking about that for weeks.

I could call it performance art, I suppose. All part of the infection of a liberal education.

I would, but watching you work out your barely-contained aggression is more enjoyable. I had trouble getting dates with the Sociology girls in university, so I'm living vicariously through you (since all that liberal education has smothered my id with a blanket of manners).

I agree, I was simply answering the question about young people being educated.

Sigh. I should have known you would never let me get away with inaccurate numbers, and that it would cause you to miss my point altogether. I take full blame.

Please change 10 cents to 60 cents, and 40 cents to 2 dollars and 40 cents. You're right, my friend with the weird way of talking is now much closer to getting his Cold Cut Trio on Parmesan Oregano, but I do believe that my point, which all along was the real point, still holds.

Of course, you could have simply told me from the beginning that this funding is not meant to make it possible for people who can't go to school to suddenly be able to go to school, that that is what student loans are for.

Anyway…

The full $6500 grant for low income students would have paid for about 80% of my 4th year at school, before taking books into account.

Maybe universities should just get more selective in their admissions.

In order to stop doing this sort of thing we have to either A) Stop having elections where everybody is allowed a vote or B) get enough people educated so that they become critical thinkers.

Yeah, this plan isn't ideal, but since we're not going to do A, at least it's a step toward B.

Except that they are means testing it – the policy gives more money to families with a lower income <edit> as does the current RESP top-up </edit>.

Also, all you are arguing is that any formula we can come up with is imperfect. I agree, but don't see that as a reason not to means-test. While all your examples are valid you are really making the argument that if we can't implement a policy (means-testing in this case) perfectly then we just shouldn't bother trying. I think excluding some deserving people is a price I'm willing to pay to avoid profligacy.

I think you can do it fairly, you just can't do it perfectly fairly, that is I think that means testing in the year of contribution is a reasonably fair way of doing it.

And yes both the current scheme and the Liberal proposal already do means-testing. From the proposal:

The Learning Passport will be $1,000 in every RESP account in each of the four years leading up to the typical start of post-secondary education, when the recipient is 14 to 17 years of age. For low-income families, the amount will be $1,500 in each of those four years.

And the current CESG system (the "top-up" to the RESP) includes an additional grant for low-income:

Additional CESG is a payment (over and above the Basic CESG amount) of either 10% or 20% on the first $500 or less of annual RESP contributions made on or after January 1, 2005, in respect of an eligible beneficiary, up until the end of the calendar year in which the beneficiary turns 17.

So, while your arguments about fairness do hold merit neither the LPC nor the current government seem to agree with them.

My point, to make it clear, is that I don't want any funding for parents who don't need it (and yes I am aware that that would be very poor politics).

Except the reality is that our enterprising young lady is the one who will look at the possible debt load racked up in student loans, and not knowing ahead of time if she has the ability to succeed, will wisely avoid going that route.

Meanwhile, your slacker dude will take out the student loans anyway, because, let's face it, he isn't looking far enough into the future to get scared of anything.

Student Loans are the *worst* method of publically funding post-secondary education. They provide the strongest disincentives to those who'd most benefit from the educational process. Not to mention that given the earning of a graduate, every successful student ends up paying the cost of their degree twice over in taxes alone, and yet we want them to pay for the privilege of doing that as well. Student Loans are a farce. Change them so that the first year is completely free low-income grants, and years 2-X are loans which are completely remission covered upon successful completion of that year and you've got a decent system. One that only leaves the student on the hook for failure, and not simply for the attempt.

Not much beer or popcorn. See below, in which MYL learns that the four grand cannot in fact be collapsed into a single semester of drunken depravity. The Liberals want to run this like an RESP except it runs nothing like an RESP.

Earlier Em
"Of course that should be addressed at an earlier stage, but it isn't happening….all of education needs an overhaul. "

I'm sorry, but what kind of argument is this? The Liberals basically blow a major part of the policy plank, and what do you do? You blast the Tories for policies you don't like. That's a non-sequitur. In other words, it's the lamest kind of argument.

So, a party that can't even properly design and cost it's own major campaign promises is somehow more ready to govern than a party that actually has governed for quite some time, and with the consent and approval of the Canadian people. You've got a very curious way of defending Liberal incompetence. I'm sorry. lol

Liberal Nola ALREADY changes the channel, can't defend this goof by her party.

Oh, we'll have plenty of time to discuss Liberal claims about the jets. Nice try. Next.

The ones who want to know the truth are interested. Didn't the LIberals demand, I say DEMAND hard numbers from the Conservatives on prison and planes, and everything else.

But the Liberals themselves can make things up on the fly, to be corrected later.

Who called whom in contempt???

It seems to me that the Cons have been tweeking alright, but not in the policy sense.

Noop, that's me. And a few others on here by the sound of it.

And it wasn't a one-size-fits-all program to begin with.

This is an announcement of policy…details and costing will be out at the end of the week.

You're now at least the second person on here who's defending this Liberal gaffe by attacking Tories. I have to say, it's a rather curious method of making the case for governing: Don't hold us to standards, let's just bash Harper?

My suggestion? You'll need more to justify this $300 million election. Just saying.