Originally Posted by lorend

I'm pretty sure scholarships are given primarily based on need, Rossclot.

Wouldn't scholarships be primarily based on grades and bursaries primarily based on need?

Wow, I love that people completely ignored the copyright issue.

The University doesn't get $45 for a $45 courseware. Again, part of the cost of the CCW is the licensing fees for copyrighted material.

Yes the University is a business and yes they are out to make money but that's not why courseware and textbooks are expensive. You realize the University doesn't set the prices for textbooks right?

Now, the errors in course ware a different issue but again, most CCW is a collection of articles, the University isn't responsible for editing someone else's published work, they should have been done well before the Professor even selected the article for inclusion in their course ware.

If its your Professor making the errors in their CCW take it up with them, they really should edit their CCW before submitting it for printing and charging students for it.

Originally Posted by lawleypop

Why would I possibly know this. I have no idea how this junk works.

Your professors are the ones who "create" them. It's either their material inside (lecture notes, problems etc), or it's other articles etc they feel are necessary...

Originally Posted by lorend

Your professors are the ones who "create" them. It's either their material inside (lecture notes, problems etc), or it's other articles etc they feel are necessary...

Thanks for the info.

I wonder if it's cockiness. They probably think they couldn't possibly make a mistake since they're so knowledgeable in their field.

Originally Posted by sew12

Wow, I love that people completely ignored the copyright issue.

The University doesn't get $45 for a $45 courseware. Again, part of the cost of the CCW is the licensing fees for copyrighted material.

Yes the University is a business and yes they are out to make money but that's not why courseware and textbooks are expensive. You realize the University doesn't set the prices for textbooks right?

Now, the errors in course ware a different issue but again, most CCW is a collection of articles, the University isn't responsible for editing someone else's published work, they should have been done well before the Professor even selected the article for inclusion in their course ware.

If its your Professor making the errors in their CCW take it up with them, they really should edit their CCW before submitting it for printing and charging students for it.

No one said they were getting $45 for a $45 course ware. It was $45 out of $50 which was in itself an exaggeration...the point was the university does make money and not just a little bit. Copyright fees accounted for they are probably still pocketing a lot.

Originally Posted by Rossclot

If I ever actually got a scholarship or bursary I could stop hooking for cheeseburgers.

A guy's gotta eat! lol. Oh Randy...

Originally Posted by EasternHeat

No one said they were getting $45 for a $45 course ware. It was $45 out of $50 which was in itself an exaggeration...the point was the university does make money and not just a little bit. Copyright fees accounted for they are probably still pocketing a lot.

A bit of Inside info, the University actually doesn't make all that much on coursewares at all. The copyright costs added with the excessive printing burden on the oldish titles printer makes sure that they are just about breaking even.

Yet still they won't allow some of that burden to go to the MSU run Underground who also have printing capabilities. I love the McMaster administration..... *sigh*

Originally Posted by huzaifa47

A bit of Inside info, the University actually doesn't make all that much on coursewares at all. The copyright costs added with the excessive printing burden on the oldish titles printer makes sure that they are just about breaking even.

Yet still they won't allow some of that burden to go to the MSU run Underground who also have printing capabilities. I love the McMaster administration..... *sigh*

Thanks for the info, though they are seriously making money on a lot of things. And yes I definitely think there could be better use of resources. Perhaps a course on resource management could help :p

Originally Posted by EasternHeat

Thanks for the info, though they are seriously making money on a lot of things. And yes I definitely think there could be better use of resources. Perhaps a course on resource management could help :p

Apparently not, while me might think that they are super rich; McMaster has a Scheduled Deficit of $30-50 Million for the next Financial year.

The Upper Brass though will still get paid upwards of min $100,000 a year.

But that's really the case with Businesses all over the world. Even in the recession/Bankruptcy CEO's were demanding "Bonuses" *facepalm*

Originally Posted by huzaifa47

Apparently not, while me might think that they are super rich; McMaster has a Scheduled Deficit of $30-50 Million for the next Financial year.

Methinks it was a bad time to undertake so many (now incomplete) renovation projects.

New engineering building cafe?

Originally Posted by Mowicz

Methinks it was a bad time to undertake so many (now incomplete) renovation projects.

New engineering building cafe?

Well I might be wrong but a number of our expansions are funded to some extent directly by Donations(Degroote, Ron Joyce and others), Mac also has a grand plan of emulating Uoft and having satellite campuses in and around Hamilton(hence the Burlington campus) which is a Fail in the current economic conditions.

What the donors are not willing to fund is quality of education and teaching, McMaster is a research based institute and often teaching itself comes second.

The only recent exception is donation by someone from the outside to the History department to get more profs or give the current profs tenures or something like that. History department now is apparently quite pimp!

Originally Posted by huzaifa47

Apparently not, while me might think that they are super rich; McMaster has a Scheduled Deficit of $30-50 Million for the next Financial year.

The Upper Brass though will still get paid upwards of min $100,000 a year.

But that's really the case with Businesses all over the world. Even in the recession/Bankruptcy CEO's were demanding "Bonuses" *facepalm*

The problem wasn't the bonuses. The problem was that the government handed out money in an effort to look good in front of voters. The bonuses were contractually stipulated incentives to attract and keep the best candidates.

Look at what has happened to companies who haven't paid out bonuses. Top executives are leaving the company for better paying jobs at other firms and an already crippled business suffers even more.

We live in an open market which is designed so that firms can enter and leave at any time. The government is intervening to stop the natural progression of the business cycle and this creates the problems.

Blame that on stupid populism and political pandering interfering with proper economic principles...

Originally Posted by huzaifa47

Well I might be wrong but a number of our expansions are funded to some extent directly by Donations(Degroote, Ron Joyce and others), Mac also has a grand plan of emulating Uoft and having satellite campuses in and around Hamilton(hence the Burlington campus) which is a Fail in the current economic conditions.

What the donors are not willing to fund is quality of education and teaching, McMaster is a research based institute and often teaching itself comes second.

The only recent exception is donation by someone from the outside to the History department to get more profs or give the current profs tenures or something like that. History department now is apparently quite pimp!

Most big Universities are research based. Mac for the most part is interested in training, but specifically training future researchers and academics, as opposed to those who only want to do a degree because it will "get them a good job"

While I dislike some of the satellite campus stuff going on, I think to a certain degree the physical side of the university IS important. I'm in TSH 120 for a class this term, and I think we all agree its a crappy room and can be detrimental to the learning experience. Plus nice, functional libraries with plenty of study space are helpful.

Also sometimes we do need more space when enrollment goes up and more research is being done. That doesn't however reduce the importance of good quality education.

Originally Posted by sew12

Wow, I love that people completely ignored the copyright issue.

The University doesn't get $45 for a $45 courseware. Again, part of the cost of the CCW is the licensing fees for copyrighted material.

Yes the University is a business and yes they are out to make money but that's not why courseware and textbooks are expensive. You realize the University doesn't set the prices for textbooks right?

Now, the errors in course ware a different issue but again, most CCW is a collection of articles, the University isn't responsible for editing someone else's published work, they should have been done well before the Professor even selected the article for inclusion in their course ware.

If its your Professor making the errors in their CCW take it up with them, they really should edit their CCW before submitting it for printing and charging students for it.

I haven't had a course where the course ware included articles or that's based on material from other resources. And besides, the licensing and copyright fee would never be close to the actual amounts we're charged for the course wares. I'm pretty sure that at least for course wares, the prices are set by the university. Firstly, because of the fact that a lot of course wares are written and not from other sources. And even if they do include copyrighted material, the fees are for that specific article, not for setting the overall price of the whole course ware.

Oh I should let everyone know how Courseware and copyright payments work.

Copyright is strange and there is a sliding scale for payments. This means that the more times you print an article, the more you pay. It's a really weird system.

Other than that, Courseware is really expensive because they are done through McMaster's printing press, and the costs of that are quite high with a finite amount of courseware available to be printed. This is why we tend to see instances of courseware not being in at Titles during the first week of school etc.

The MSU actually has the capability to print courseware at much cheaper at the Underground. The printers aren't as big as McMaster Printing but if printing was to be done simultaneously it would be beneficial to students.

Plus, the copyright costs would be lowered as you would be printing few instances. (Again, it is a reallly weird system).

The entire problem is that nobody uses Underground for Courseware. Underground budgets a certain amount of revenue coming from Courseware and it has never reached that amount. Moreover, the amount of Courseware being printed hasn't been standard. Primary reason is that profs don't care to use Underground because they don't care about costs to students.

So what can we do? We need to get more of our profs to print courseware at the Underground so that we can get cheaper courseware.

If anyone wants to know more about this issue feel free to drop me a PM. I've got loads of other info about the courseware stuff but I won't bore everyone because I'm not Huzaifa.