FEC

At Whither the U of A, Jeremy brings out one of his favourite hobby-horses, the annual Faculty Evaluation Committee process.  (Apparently, the Science FEC is meeting this week.)  Jeremy has complained about this in the past, and this comment near the end of his post nicely captures his thinking:

"The bottom line is that the current FEC system works really well from the point of view of deans and senior administrators, because it creates a self-applied whip on faculty to work harder and harder, and to produce more and more."

I have engaged in dialogue in the comments of his earlier posts on this subject, and it was clear then that the best we could hope for was to agree to disagree. I won't engage again, but I do need to commend the three commenters who have so far responded. In particular, the implication that FEC is what is required for academics to be motivated to achieve is insulting and (I believe) erroneous for the vast majority. We work hard because we want to excel, and FEC offers a reasonable reward system for those years in which we are successful.

Send Your Kids to MUN?

Macleans OnCampus has a story about the cost of education at Memorial University in Newfoundland.  Tuition averages $2550 per year, and housing costs are similarly low compared with other Canadian universities.  The low tuition is due to a commitment by the provincial government to provide a greater degree of support, not unlike what used to be the case at Alberta and other Canadian universities.  This begs the question:  why are residents of Newfoundland able to get this sort of progressive action from their government, but no one else?  And in the meantime, if you have university educations to pay for, shouldn't you be looking at this institution?

Canadian University Debt Load

Here's a recent piece from Maclean's OnCampus describing how the average graduating Canadian student actually owes more than his/her US counterpart.  It comes down to the pathetic level of student aid that is available here.  Having been educated down south, and having supported a dependent attending a Canadian university, I have to agree that we are doing a crap job of funding scholarships for our undergraduate students.

I also wonder if there is less expectation here in Canada for parents to cover their children's postsecondary costs?  I doubt it, as my understanding is that most students do not qualify for student loans on the expectation that their parents will pay for things.  Do others have different experiences?

Blogger Problem?

Biped, I saw your last two comments show up (even got e-mail alerts), then when I checked later they were gone.  I'm not sure why that is happening, but please note that I am NOT deleting it.  If I cannot figure out where the comments went, I will go so far as to include their text in a post while I am sorting this out.  I am not trying to silence you.

Know Your Enemy

Fascinating stream of comments on Jeremy's blog concerning the Gwyn Morgan gong show yesterday.  I agree with the basic contention of commenter Vox Clamantis, who posits the theory that this particular operation was meant as a wake-up call to a complacent professoriate who do not understand the need to actively counter the distortions of tools like Morgan whose wealth has given them the bully pulpit to bash liberal education.  While I also agree with other commenters that our senior administration should be playing a more active role in mounting such a defense, there is no doubt that we need to pick up our game.

Here's RATM to get your juices flowing:

Google Trending Evil?

Apropos of our current migration to gmail and associated Google apps, I found this Balloon Juice post on Google's business practices to be quite illuminating.