Path: utzoo!dciem!nrcaer!heraclitus!rayt
From: rayt@heraclitus.UUCP (R.)
Newsgroups: ont.general
Subject: Re: Spending for education
Summary: no
Keywords: money
Message-ID: <7544@heraclitus.UUCP>
Date: 23 Nov 89 02:18:16 GMT
References: <606@alias.UUCP> <12258@watcgl.waterloo.edu> <7470@cognos.UUCP> <12313@watcgl.waterloo.edu>
Reply-To: rayt@cognos.UUCP (R.)
Distribution: ont
Organization: Cognos Inc., Ottawa, Canada
Lines: 43

In article <12313@watcgl.waterloo.edu> Mark Earnshaw writes, wondering
where I culled some international statistics on public education spending:

>I would be interested to know where these statistics came from.

_My_ source was the Oct 7th issue of the Economist (p25); _they_ got it from
the UNESCO statistical yearbook (1988).

>As some one else has already pointed out with reference to another posting,
>some of this money seems to be getting lost between the government and the
>universities/colleges/etc. In the five years that I've been at university,
>I keep hearing about underfunding and how Canada ranks very poorly in terms
>of money committed towards education. Since education is a provincial matter,
>perhaps this is the money transferred from the federal government, some of
>which then gets diverted into other areas before actually reaching educational
>institutions?

The particular article in which this table appeared focused on the American
problem, and how accountability and restructuring might be used to increase
the effectiveness of the money thrown at the problem, and it is likely to be
unsafe to assume that our problems matched theirs, since their's is close to
being the worst around. Also part of the difficulty in interpreting these
numbers is knowing exactly what `public education spending' means. I took it
to mean public school, that is, primary and secondary school institutions,
rather than the amount the public (i.e. taxpayer) spends on education generally
(i.e. public-education spending, rather than public education-spending).
This being the case, universities would not figure into the numbers.

Also, at university one generally (from the faculty) hears about the shortage
of proper (research) equipment, rather than the size of the classes. Taking
courses with two or three people in attendance (with one or two auditing) is
not uncommon; in some departments, even some third year level courses have
well below ten students. Clearly, there are courses at the other extreme where
_thousands_ of student are enrolled, but these are first and second year
requirements for _all_ social science, or _all_ engineering and applied
sciences, etc. Giving an average number for such extremes seems pointless.

								R.
-- 
Ray Tigg                          |  Cognos Incorporated
                                  |  P.O. Box 9707
(613) 738-1338 x5013              |  3755 Riverside Dr.
UUCP: rayt@cognos.uucp            |  Ottawa, Ontario CANADA K1G 3Z4