rayt@heraclitus.UUCP (R.) (11/23/89)
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
clarke@csri.toronto.edu (Jim Clarke) (11/25/89)
rayt@heraclitus.UUCP (R.) writes: > ... >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. >Ray Tigg | Cognos Incorporated I agree that there are wide variations, and that an average is likely to mean less than you'd think. But not all the large classes are required courses for first-year students in big programs. In this department (Computer Science at the University of Toronto), a class of fewer than ten students would be considered tiny even at the fourth-year level. Twenty to fifty is more common, and classes of more than fifty are not a surprise in fourth year. In second and third year, thirty to sixty is pretty standard, while 100 would be surprisingly large. In first year, 120-150 is a common starting size; dropouts will tend to reduce this by up to 30% by the end of a term. This is certainly better than seven or eight years ago, when fourth-year classes were very often 100 or so. But the present situation is far from ideal. A class size of 20 is about the largest you should have in fourth year, I think; any larger and you're reading some text onto the blackboard. It's fashionable, as it always has been, to claim that our students can't read or write, but by third year they are certainly capable of reading that text on their own. They deserve something a little more personal in their classes. In the bad old days of the early 80's when classes were huge, I used to try to get students to understand why we limited enrolment in courses -- a process I'm in charge of -- by recollecting the fourth-year courses of my own student days, which I had thought were too big at 20 to 25 students. The present-day students I used this reminiscence on didn't just think that things had once been very different; they simply couldn't imagine the educational situation I'd been in. They had never been in a class small enough to be taught as it should be! Things are better now, but they're not what they should be. And this is at U of T, supposedly significantly better off than most other Canadian universities. - Jim Clarke -- Dept. of Computer Science, Univ. of Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4 (416) 978-4058 clarke@csri.toronto.edu or clarke@csri.utoronto.ca or ...!{uunet, pyramid, watmath, ubc-cs}!utai!utcsri!clarke
sccowan@watmsg.waterloo.edu (S. Crispin Cowan) (11/27/89)
In article <1989Nov24.122558.9658@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> clarke@csri.toronto.edu (Jim Clarke) writes: [facts & history of class size at UofT] >Things are better now, but they're not what they should be. And this is >at U of T, supposedly significantly better off than most other Canadian >universities. Keeping in mind that this is simply my media-generated impression of UofT; but I had been given to understand that UofT class sizes were significantly WORSE than most other universities. Correct me if wrong. >- >Jim Clarke -- Dept. of Computer Science, Univ. of Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4 > (416) 978-4058 >clarke@csri.toronto.edu or clarke@csri.utoronto.ca > or ...!{uunet, pyramid, watmath, ubc-cs}!utai!utcsri!clarke ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Login name: sccowan In real life: S. Crispin Cowan Office: DC3548 x3934 Home phone: 570-2517 Post Awful: 60 Overlea Drive, Kitchener, N2M 1T1 UUCP: watmath!watmsg!sccowan Domain: sccowan@watmsg.waterloo.edu "We have to keep pushing the pendulum so that it doesn't get stuck in the extremes--only the middle is worth having." Orwell, Videobanned -- Kim Kofmel
clarke@csri.toronto.edu (Jim Clarke) (11/28/89)
>Last week I wrote: >... >>Things are better now, but they're not what they should be. And this is >>at U of T, supposedly significantly better off than most other Canadian >>universities. sccowan@watmsg.waterloo.edu (S. Crispin Cowan) replied: >Keeping in mind that this is simply my media-generated impression of >UofT; but I had been given to understand that UofT class sizes were >significantly WORSE than most other universities. Correct me if >wrong. In computer science, during the peak of enrolments, I think we were worse than The Opposition -- Waterloo, naturally -- by a factor of between 1.3 and 2, with the usual case being around 1.3. That's certainly "significant," but it's not enormous. The operative word above is "think": I didn't have statistics then, and certainly don't now (because class size is so much less of a worry). I learned what I knew from Waterloo graduates who had come to U of T for graduate study. One of the changes we ought to remember is that it used to be roughly accurate, though a simplification, to talk about just U of T and Waterloo. Now there are quite a few good places to go, so choosing a university for undergraduate computer science is more like choosing one for any other discipline, and you might well choose someplace other than U of T if you want small classes. (On the other hand, a long time ago, I went to McGill for physics, and certainly had smaller classes than at U of T; I remember being surprised that my contemporaries at here had classes of 50 in fourth year, instead of the 20 or so that I had. But I don't recall thinking they got a worse education.) - Jim Clarke -- Dept. of Computer Science, Univ. of Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4 (416) 978-4058 clarke@csri.toronto.edu or clarke@csri.utoronto.ca or ...!{uunet, pyramid, watmath, ubc-cs}!utai!utcsri!clarke