[cosmostein]

[Bugs]

Thanks for your thoughtful response.

We mostly agree, except I think that you underestimate the degree to which the universities -- and community colleges -- have become instruments of social engineering. And that is the nub of the problem. You pass over lightly the blatant and self-justifying racial and sexual discrimination they implement in society.

Let me be clear -- I am not opposed to women preferring careers over marriage and a family, or am I in support of racial barriers around the professions.

What I am against is the promotion of the idea that everything should be in proportion to their demographic weight in every occupation -- let's call it, the Bob Rae ideal.

In fact, women and racial minorities did manage to get into law and medicine going back to the turn of the 20th century. But, when I was a kid, higher education was, in some part, a function of social class. You had to pay your way. The thing is, you could actually work in the summer, and do it. In my case, for example -- which is in no way unique -- I worked at adult jobs in the summer, filling in for vacationing regulars. I worked at Goodyear Tire Co, and made $2.26 an hour, plus a shift premium. Call it $90 a week. My tuition was $450 a year. Living at home, I could cover my expenses with three months in the summer, and a part-time job at Eatons on the weekends. No problem-o.

Admittedly, women were more dependent on the families, and thus social class, then men. But, on the male side, I wasn't abnormal at all. My point is that the social class part of the picture wasn't something that was hard to overcome.

Now, it's the opposite. The university is tied into highly discriminatory policies aimed at remeding what are now taken to be historic injustices. Even now, when well over half the student body is female, the ideologies of restorative justice continue. It means merit is set aside.

Its a kind of irrational craziness, because if academic merit doesn't determine entrance to courses of further study, the wheels fall off.

There will never be a time when 50% of engineering school is female. Sorry. It isn't a worthy goal. There are always going to be a lot of women who opt for a family role -- say a third -- so, to get 50% representation in an engineering school out of the remaining 67% is going to require informal quotas ... at a minimum. (That lays aside the distaste a lot of women have for mathematics.)

The important thing is the all these groups have the freedom to apply ... and win ... seats in these programmes. It ought not to be an institutional goal, and one, by the way, that does not go away when equality is achieved.

I think this is one of the key factors corrupting universities. They have generated a lot of bogus history to justify their discriminatory practices, just as the Nazi's justified their discriminatory practices. My point isn't that they are Nazi's, but that you can't do these things on a broad basis without these justifications.

You can't make up for past wrongs that whites might have done other groups by imposing wrongs on the next generation of whites. It only redistributes the wrongs. You can't get rid of racism and sexism by using racial and gender categories to rectify things. You only get rid of it by stopping it.

And they won't do that until they have to. Dominant groups justify their dominance, and women are no different.

The excessive funding is the easy part.

[cosmostein]

[NomerF]

Sadly, whilst many students are forced to stop because of financial crisis, some universities are still pushing tuition prices higher.

[centrifugal]

Universities are not robbing anyone, if you run a business you have the freedom to charge whatever prices you want. The ease of access to loans creates a large supply of money, so as any business would do they are capitalizing on that. The universitities can only charge what people are willing/able to pay. If the supply of funds decreased so would the prices.

I don't know if that 2M Canadians figure is acurate, but if it is correct then the most likely cause is government interference with economy. I would point to 2 issues.

1. Government subsidies to institutions

Many post secondary educational institutions receive subsidies from government. The goal with any subsidy ofcourse is to make services/products more afforable. The moment this occurs you are giving consumer power to government authorities, this is a manipulation of free market. Second many Canadians do not go to university yet their hard earned tax payer dollars will at some level be handed out to these institutions.

Whether you have never attended university, or even if you have already paid down your debt. You will always be paying a student loan through taxes.

2. Fractional Reserve Banking

It's hard to sum this up in a short parapraph, but I will simplify as best I can. When you go and get a loan from the bank you are borrowing money that does not and will never exist. Then you pay interest on the money you borrowed. Then a large portion of the money you borrowed(that didn't exist) is then put back into a bank somewhere and reloaned a second time. The process of borrowing money is also responsible for creating money and inflating the currency.

Everytime you put money into a bank, or borrow money from a bank you are inflating the currency.


None of the mainstream parties are going to address this system. So start a new party, or change the issues in existing parties if you want lower tuition.

On a related topic, I have posted a thread regarding Fractional Reserve Banking and World Banking Conspiracy: http://www.bloggingtories.ca/f.....11287.html