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Tuesday, August 29, 1995
I'm back, but why the fog?
My thanks to Horacio Oliveira and John Morris, who have kept the Daily
Bulletin going while I've been away.
I return to find a parade of new
signs along the ring road, and a considerable pile of reading matter on
my desk, including some registration statistics dated last Friday.
Grand total of those who have confirmed that they'll be arriving as
first-year students is 3,849, which represents 107 per cent of the
November 1 target. The science faculty in particular will be hoping
for some second thoughts: it has 676 students planning to come,
against a November target of 600, and usually gets some second-year
repeaters as well as the brand-new first-year students.
Anyway, as I say, I'm back. Spent the past two weeks at Chautauqua,
where I love everything from the lake to the concerts (although my
son enjoyed Huey Lewis and the News a lot more than I did). Among the
lectures and talks under the trees was one by a fellow named Michael
Shaffer, whose hobby is the history and culture of
American universities,
and says he has visited some 800 campuses.
Schaffer told us that the story of American colleges is about "sex,
money, race and sports -- oh, yes, and academics". And he mentioned that,
apart from the military academies, there's just one degree-granting
institution in the United States that offers free tuition to all its
students.
Guess what it is.
Battling malignant hyperthermia
Says a letter here: "Malignant hyperthermia is an inherited muscle
abnormality which may cause sudden unexplained deaths in healthy
people undergoing anaesthesia. MH susceptible people can also suffer
reactions from severe physical or emotional stress." The MH Association
will hold its annual symposium at UW this year -- on Saturday,
September 9. Sessions will include a report on research progress, a
talk on managing stress, and other workshops. Information is available
from Angela Pollak at 579-8498.
A number of numbers
When Ontario's unemployment rate was 8 per cent last year, the
unemployment rate for people with a university degree was 3 per cent.
In 1993, when things were tougher and the provincial rate was 10.4
per cent, the rate for university graduates was 4.2 per cent.
That's one little excerpt from Facts & Figures: A Compendium of Statistics
on Ontario Universities, published by the Council of Ontario
Universities and now in its third annual edition.
A scattering of other statistics found in it:
- Ontario universities spent $4,246,000,000 in 1993-94 -- the great
majority of the money went to salaries, but $65 million was spent on
library books.
- Science and engineering students make up about 31 per cent of
full-time undergraduate students (62,877 out of 200,645).
- The smallest university is College Universitaire de Hearst, with
just 63 full-time students. Waterloo, ranking sixth, is less than half
the size of first-place Toronto withits 34,512 full-timers.
- More men than women apply to medical school, but more than twice
as many women as men apply to teachers' college.
- The province has 12,840 full-time professors at last count, with
815 of them at Waterloo (and 2,523 at Toronto).
More of this kind of thing in a day or two, along with whatever else
the news may be. It's (relatively) good to be back.
Chris Redmond
Information
and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo
(519) 888-4567 ext. 3004
credmond@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca
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