[ont.general] Politics of funding Ont. universities

peterr@utcsrgv.UUCP (Peter Rowley) (05/06/84)

As there's no ont.politics group, this note on politics belongs here, I
suppose.

The Ont. government is known for being occasionally progressive when the
opinion polls indicate support for progressive legislation.  There seem
to be limits to this, however;  the lack of support for universities is a
case in point.  It seems incongruous that a gov't that preaches hi-tech is
letting the source of its brainpower go to rot.  Particularly when opinion
polls indicate broad support for university funding.

So what's going on?  Did a child of a cabinet minister get kicked out of
university, and we are now suffering out of revenge?  Is this an ideological
policy?  Do they honestly believe that universities are inefficient in some 
way?  (The current attempts at so-called "rationalization" indicate they might
think this;  if true, they do not understand that centralizing study of one
subject at one particular univ. is a BAD IDEA-- departments tend to adopt
certain "party lines" in various areas so one needs multiple departments to
have a multi-faceted view of an area (e.g. monitors are the basis for
synchronization in OS's at UoT while UWaterloo uses message-passing--
anyone think of some more examples?))

Any ideas folks?  Someone know someone in the cabinet that might know?

p. rowley, U. Toronto