Mach 5, 2003 News http://otherpress.douglas.bc.ca the other press BC Provincial Budget Calls for More Students, Less Funding Status quo budget offers no new hope for the average student Chris Shepherd The Ubyssey VANCOUVER (CUP)—The BC Liberals want to put 9,000 more students in classrooms at provincial universi- ties but will cut funding by $19 million over the next three years according to last week's budget. University of British Columbia Associate Vice- President, Government Relations, Allan Tupper acknowledged the contradiction in the numbers. “Expansion of the system requires proper funding,” he said, “and it doesn’t seem to us there is any clear funding for expansion.” Student Union President Kristen Harvey added that because there is no increase to core funding, universities will have to increase tuition to alleviate monetary pres- sures. “What we're seeing here is a downloading of cost onto students,” Harvey said. The province put $23 million into the BC Leading Edge Chairs program, which will continue to assign research chairs around the province in medical, social, environmental and technological fields. “T think it’s great that we're getting money for Canadian research chairs,” Harvey added, “but we're paying the cost of faculty [remuneration] while [the university] is getting this chair funding.” Summer McFadyen, BC chairperson for the Canadian Federation of Students, also sees the new research fund- ing as being a burden on students. “These projects that [the BC Liberals] are putting out, the institutions have to match the government’s fund- ae Dees ; ’ ing,” she said. “So in many cases they'll be moving resources from providing seats in the classroom to match- ing the government's research funding.” Kevin Groves British Columbia Bureau President of Microsoft Canada Outlines Software Giant’s Future Prof worries about further privacy invasion from Microsoft programs rs UBC Vice-President, Students, Brian Sullivan does not agree. He said the University only has to match 20 percent of the funding and it won't be done with students’ money. “The 20 percent the University comes up with to match the research project provincial funds is raised pri- vately,” he said. However, “It’s maintaining the status quo,” Harvey said describ- ing the budget. “And is continuing with the premise of a zero, zero, zero budget [increase] for the remainder of the Liberal term in office.” Associate professor William Bruneau, from the depart- ment of education, pointed out that his faculty has seen a dramatic change in the ratio of students to faculty over the past years. “We have a 300 percent increase at the graduate level, and our professorial compliment is down by just under 60 percent. You draw your own conclusions about what is good for students there.” The budget puts a high priority on medical and skills training in the province to meet future shortages in those areas. “We're going to double the number of doctors that we graduate at the new [UBC] Life Science Centre,” prom- ised Premier Gordon Campbell in a speech to the BC Chamber of Commerce last week. Still, Harvey feels that the province is not helping stu- dents enough. “The federal level [of funding] has changes that are helping students, but at the provincial level there are not, despite it being their jurisdiction.” The Students’ Union Pride Collective meets Wednesdays at 4:00pm in the Pride Resource Room (Room 110 in the Students' Union Building). All lesbian, gay, bi, transgendered, questioning and allied students are welcome. VANCOUVER (CUP)—By 2010, technology will influence Canadian lives more than it has in the last 40 years, according to the head of Microsoft Canada. And to capitalize on that trend, Microsoft will spend $8 billion worldwide this year on research and development, said Frank Clegg, the compa- nys head of Canadian operations in a recent speech to Vancouver's business leaders. The money will go toward projects such as designing devices allowing users to scribble notes and chat with others at the office without worry- ing about a hacker or virus. “The challenge is that the hackers are getting the same access to technology that we are,” said Clegg after a presentation to the Vancouver Board of Trade Wednesday. To beat hackers in cyberspace, Microsoft has just spent $100 million on making all Windows servers more secure. The company is also working on ways to make current and future Microsoft products more user- friendly and find better ways to filter the massive number of emails clogging inboxes. “I don’t know about you, but a couple of hun- dred emails a day is not exactly my idea of fun,” said Clegg. so-called digital divide, the gap between those that are tech savvy and those that are not, Clegg added. But not everyone was quick to embrace the rel- atively rosy picture being put forward by Microsoft that technology will benefit the world more now than at any time in the past. “It’s all very speculative,” said Richard Rosenberg, a Computer Science professor at the University of British Columbia. “Obviously it’s in Microsoft's benefit to argue that more and more is always coming, and it’s better and better and it would improve our lives.” Microsoft’s version of the future also worries Rosenberg because the monolithic company, owned by Bill Gates, the richest man on earth according to Forbes magazine, has a tendency to monitor a user’s computer to provide updates, often without the user knowing. Those updates are then flogged onto the user whether they are needed or not, said Rosenberg. “It puts a significant push to turn over software before it’s obsolete,” he said. “Microsoft has been pushing ahead with this for quite awhile and I think it will be part of their push for the future.” Last January, a group of California consumers received $1.1 billion US after settling a lawsuit in which they accused the computer giant of main- The company is also working on narrowing the taining an unfair software monopoly. © page 4 Douglas Students’ Union Local 18-Canadian Federation of Students