Fernand Martin, a researcher at the Université de Montréal, has done a study that he is about to publish. The study shows that the impact of the university contribution to the education of highly qualified people, together with their research activities, adds up to more than $50 billion over the last 20 years. This is the contribution to society in general terms. This macroeconomic indicator could well mean that 20% of the population has been educated at university in a research environment. Does that provide anything for the other 80%?
In fact, we can see that this 20% is generating much more than their share through their taxes that pay for services for all other sectors of our society, while they require less than 8% of the payments made by provincial and federal governments to support the services they need. So, in return, they contribute much more than the person whose lifetime salary is a million dollars more. It goes beyond the individual to society as a whole.