Goodyear still making announcements
I’m not sure if they serve rubber chicken on this circuit, but regardless, Minister of State for Science and Technology Gary Goodyear must be tiring of the grind of showing up to announce the winners of research funding competitions. Yesterday, the government issued a press release to tell everyone that the Minister was present to announce the 166 winners of the inaugural Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships. These scholarships are valued at $50,000 annually for three years (more than twice the value of a normal graduate scholarship), and will eventually support 500 students annually. The scholarships are administered through CIHR, NSERC, and SSHRC with a $25-million investment from last year’s (2008) budget. p.s. Many congratulations to the recipients.
I’m sure that all those that that were awarded this top prize are very deserving recipients (congratulations to them all). However, it would make much more sense to me to support 300 graduate students at 30K/yr and get twice the research for your dollars (keep in mind that this is still a much greater stipend than most graduate students receive, and thus would still attract the best students). This would do much more to “To promote world-class excellence” and to “reaffirm Canada as a global centre of excellence in research and education” as it is stated on the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships web page (www.vanier.gc.ca). Its just too bad that the powers that be are more interested in political gains than research.