What's a better university system: the USA or Canada?

[RickJay]

@Urbanredneck

On the side - books. In Canada I see they get free tuition. Do students have to buy their own books or laptops?

Urbanredneck, I am going to again ask that, if you are going to ask questions, you make a good faith effort to actually read the answers if you are going to keep asking questions. The fact Canadian universities do charge tuition has not only been mentioned, it’s been mentioned several times, and specific dollar figures have even been used.

If you want to see Canadian university webpages, http://www.google.com is a commonly used way of finding things online. Try searching for “top Canadian universities” - not “colleges” - and go from there.

[Northern_Piper]

@RickJay

I think there’s a frat or two at Queen’s, but it’s more of a small little club; there is no whole big “Greek life” thing there. I did not know a single person at Queen’s in a fraternity or sorority and could not have told you where any were. That wasn’t a part of the social experience at all, and that’s a school with rather a lot of social experience.

Way back in the day, Queen’s (well, the Alma Mater Society - basically the student government) actually banned fraternities. I do not recall the details but the jist was that it was seen as a foreign influence, and elitist. This was eighty, maybe ninety years ago. That ban remains technically in place, though never enforced because most people don’t even remember it.

Here’s an article from a few years ago from the Queen’s Journal that discusses the ban. There are a few frats and one sorority, but they don’t have access to University and AMS facilities/resources. The reason for the ban is that they are not inclusive. Queen’s operates on the basis that any social group has to be open to all students to be eligible for access to university resources. That’s not how frats and sororities operate.

The pledge against fraternities

Only one year since their inauguration last March, the Kappa Sigma fraternity near Queen’s now boasts around 40 “brothers”. From focusing on philanthropy and building a strong social community, Mitch Wilson, ArtSci ‘18, one of the vice-presidents, said that their fraternity’s goal is to build connections.

However, Kappa Sigma have to call their chapter the “Kingston Colony” as Queen’s has a student government sanctioned ban on fraternities and sororities.

This ban means that fraternities and sororities can’t be officially affiliated with the University or use AMS resources to promote
their organizations.

As per section 27 of AMS Policy Manual 3, fraternities and sororities are defined as groups “that are exclusive in membership and have secret oaths or pledges”, contrary to the AMS’ policy of inclusion.

Queen’s is one of the only Canadian universities to have an outright ban on these societies. The University of Toronto alone has 26 Greek organizations. Closely following suit, UBC has 21 and Western has 17.

Despite the ban, Kingston is home to three fraternities — Zeta Psi, Kappa Sigma and Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi) — and one sorority, Alpha Pi Phi.

All have formed within the last eight years, with two Greek organizations popping up just in the last five years.

At Queen’s, the ban has been in place for the past 84 years. The rule originated in 1933 in response to Arts and Science and medical students forming two separate fraternities in the 1920s.

The ban was disregarded by the medical student fraternity, who were then tried against the AMS court in 1934 for “contravention of the AMS constitution.” After being found guilty, they were no longer eligible to participate in all student political, social and athletic activities for a full year.

In 2013, the issue of Greek societies was back on the table.

The AMS executive re-evaluated the ban in January 2013. Assembly voted in favour of the ban again, a decision that was then endorsed by Queen’s Senate.

[Barbarian]

@Spoons

Was that,

We are, we are, we are, we are, we are the Engineers!

I was never at Queens, but there was an incredibly homophobic response to that chant in the '90s.

@Urbanredneck

Other questions:

Has anyone done a comparison of US to Canadian colleges on issues such as;

1. Do degrees require the same number of credit hours?

2. Are classroom sizes about the same?

3. Are professors paid the same?

4. Are Canadian classes taught by full professors or do they use adjucts or grad students to teach classes?

On the side - books. In Canada I see they get free tuition. Do students have to buy their own books or laptops?

…
Finally who is retirement thru? Here in Kansas if one teaches at say the University of Kansas its thru the state in a program called KPERS.

1-Yes, a BA degree is a degree throughout North America. See https://www.univcan.ca/universities/quality-assurance/professional-programs-accreditation/

2-Classroom sizes vary widely even within the same university, depending on your course of study. My largest class – intro to linguistics – had 200 students. My smallest had 6.

3-Again, this is all over the map.

4-Depends on school/course/teacher etc… In my experience TAs will grade work and run supplementary labs, but won’t run a whole course.

Canadians do not get free tuition at the university level. (Not sure where you got that idea.)
Because education is a provincial matter, all provinces can and do set their own rules about how much they want to lean on universities.
So tuition can be capped at different rates for residents of the province, the country, or international students, and at different rates for each program.

Retirement? Well in Canada we have a federally funded retirement program called the Canada Pension Plan (Quebec has its own, but if you work in Quebec and retire elsewhere you still get paid, and vice versa). It guarantees a basic income of about $13,000 per year.
On top of this people can contribute to their own self-directed tax sheltered plans (RRSPs and TFSAs).

And then each workplace may or may not (the bigger the institution, the more likely) have its own pension and benefits plan.