Category: Life

The secret: tie-ins.

When you buy certain textbooks, like my math and physics book, you now get a code. This code grants you temporary access to a website operated by the publisher. The code can only be used the once and gets tied to your student number.

Why does this matter? Because this website is how you submit your assignments. Without it, you get a mark of zero. The profs like it because the website automatically and instantly grades everything for them, which I’m sure is also appreciated by the teaching assistants.

You do have the option of buying the code on its own. But the extremely high price of the code ($60) means that buying it and a used textbook would cost more than a new textbook.

I’m evidently not a fan of this dynamic.

In the short span since I last graduated in 2007, annual tuition for full-time science students at the University of Ottawa had jumped from $4,786.65 to $6,342.08. A 32% increase. I don’t ever remember paying less than $5,500, but I’m going by the tuition posted on the University of Ottawa website for that year and program.

As a point of comparison, minimum wage in Ontario increased by 7% over the same period, or from $9.50 to $10.25. It used to be that you could work during university and come out of it without significant debt, if any. Now it is expected for students to be saddled with debts greater than the average Canadian annual salary.

Yet even as university education is becoming less affordable, it is becoming more necessary. The undergraduate degree has displaced the high school diploma as the minimum barrier of entry to white-collar work. The Master’s degree meanwhile has filled the void left by the undegrad, and I see it as a requirement on more and more mainstream jobs.

We rank amongst the most educated citizenry of the world, and it’s as if we don’t know what to do with it. Employers are raising the education requirements for job postings because the work pool can sustain it, even though the jobs themselves haven’t changed.

In fact, many employers seem to be more enamoured with the idea of their staff having a university education than the contents of that education. How many jobs have you seen listing an undergraduate degree as a requirement but with little care as to which one? Is the employer better served because the person who fills spreadsheets all day has a Philosophy degree? How many stories have we heard from new graduates where the continuation of their role at a company wasn’t dependent on their competency, which they had satisfied, but whether they had obtained a diploma by a given date?

It’s as if the undergraduate degree has become no more than a license to apply for white collar work.

We’re caught in this cycle whereby we get educated because the market demands it, while the market demands it because we get educated. Unless something gives, students are going to eventually fork over $20k/year for tuition for nothing more than the privilege of avoiding automatic rejection by HR software.

I’m not saying that education is without value. It’s that that value is rendered meaningless when all that is cared about is a piece of paper rather than what it symbolizes. When competency takes second place to technicalities. When computers reject people not on a basis of qualifications, but rather if they had the right set of letters beside the field written “education.”

Most desk jobs out there should be open to people with high school diplomas. If you have the right experience and competency from years working in the field, you should be able to apply for a position without fear that a computer will dump you for having the “wrong” university degree.

More educated Canadians is a good thing. But I believe that how our society has come to exploit this fact is to its own detriment. We need to figure out what education means to us, and develop a vision for how we can harness it the best way possible.

Charts from the Canadian Federation of Students.

Miguel de Icaza wrote an interesting piece today sharing his thoughts on what he thinks is the lack of penetration by Linux in the desktop market. He points to development principles that have hurt backwards and cross-distribution compatibility, making the operating system less likely to function as well as the likes of Apple’s OS X.

I think he raises some very valid arguments, but I also believe he’s missing the elephant in the room. I would summarize my explanation as to the lack of adoption as people take the path of least resistance. 

That means using whatever comes on the system they bought. How often do casual users go through the trouble of switching operating systems after the fact? That’s a lot to ask from regular people. If the benefits are there, some may make the jump – but there’s a really high threshold you have to reach before they’ll be willing to overcome their reservations on the matter.

Meanwhile, what motivation do computer manufacturers have to include it by default on their end? The path of least resistance is to keep using what’s worked. That means Windows. There’s a financial risk to deviate from that.

I think as the hybridization of tablets with laptops go mainstream, there’s an opportunity for Linux to hit the desktop market by way of Android. If everyone’s used to laptops that behave like the mobile operating systems of today, it won’t be such a big jump to then have desktops that use Android. I think the rise of hybrids will have the effect of making mobile operating systems more desktop-y, making it more suitable as a workstation product.

On Friday, the Ottawa Citizen published a piece titled What does tacky sex have to do with gay pride? by Janice Kennedy. In it, she blasts Pride week and the parade in particular, calling it “classless”, “vulgar”, and undignified:

Not to mention the big parade Sunday afternoon, which will feature drag queens, leather kings, sailor-capped guys in leopard skin bikinis and the usual display of rampant horniness on floats dedicated to sexuality made adolescent, trivial and — what’s the word? — tacky? vulgar? classless? all of the above?

How does iconizing the pageantry of monumental bad taste — even when it’s dressed up in adjectives like “fun” and “colourful” — serve as a vehicle for dignity? How does a public sexfest honour a struggle for equality and human rights? Assuming a desire to end the alienating forces of segregation, how does any of this function as a bridge?

She’s certainly not alone in voicing a disdain for the events. This conversation repeats itself every time Pride rolls around.

I wonder if she’s ever actually been to one of these parades. Her view that it is no more than a hedonistic orgy on wheels doesn’t at all reflect how the march actually is. It is far more mundane, involving dozens of groups walking down to show their support for various causes.

The title for her piece, in which she calls it gay pride, goes some way into explaining why she doesn’t get it. It is not a gay pride parade. It’s been called that, and it certainly has its fair share of gay people in attendance, but it isn’t a gay pride parade. It is a nexus for all those who want to show solidarity with issues surrounding the body, of which sexual orientation is only one small part.

That’s why you’ll also find in the parade groups dealing with such things as gender expression and identity, HIV stigmatization, non-monogamy, BDSM and leather. It is an environment where people can celebrate among others and not be judged for it.

To ask such things is not to be joyless or puritanical. It is to be publicly aware and socially respectful. Yes, the world should know who you are, why you’re flying the flag or wearing the triangle, why (against family expectations) you have a boyfriend, girlfriend or same-sex spouse. But the world really does not need to know explicitly what turns you on.

With the exception of sexual orientation, Janice is uncomfortable with any notion of body and sex that deviates from her perceived norms. To the point where she argues that people shouldn’t be open about it at all, not even at its own parade. She sees it as taboo.

I don’t believe that anyone should be ashamed about their body. I think that shame inhibits communication and so fosters ignorance, which in turn opens a world of pain for a lot of people.

This is a parade about liberation. Unlike Janice, I believe this is very much the place for people to be open and free of the shame for who they love, how they dress, their gender, their kinks, etc. To her it’s an undesirable expression that is entirely unrelated to the struggle for acceptance. To me, it couldn’t be more about it.

I’d also like to throw a shout out to Jeremy & Tina for having joined us at the parade. I had a great time, thanks guys!