Some countries with much smaller populations than Canada’s 35 million, have developed a sharply differentiated or tiered university system. But Canada’s university system evinces a different prevailing ethos. It aspires to lesser differences overall—in terms of caliber of teaching, content, research, and facilities. Thus, last year, Canada’s leading national English-language magazine, Maclean’s, reported on Canada’s Big Five universities crying out for more research funding.