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University of Leicester firing all pure math faculty

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Re: University of Leicester firing all pure math faculty

#91

Post by agumonkey »

kleiba wrote: post #15

I recently read Dijkstra's "On the fact that the Atlantic Ocean has two sides". [1] In vast parts, it's not much more than mildly disguised US-bashing (Dijkstra was always a grumpy old man) but that's not what caught my eye. What did was the fact that he describes the US research landscape as a system that orients itself around short-term projects and industry desires. Dijkstra clearly expresses his contempt for this…

The opposite is also true. I read a book about early electricity discoveries. People in Europe were all about the deep end theories. America.. pragmatism reigned supreme. As long as you can make something out of phenomenon you're good to go. The book said that by the time Edison made a light bulb, European academics were still debating unproven theories.

Re: University of Leicester firing all pure math faculty

#92

Post by barry-cotter »

woofie11 wrote: post #56
anticristi wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you analysis, but is this necessarily bad (or rather, is all of this bad)? As a young researcher, my peers and I already noticed the "customer-ification" of academia. Taxpayers are investigating in academia, either via tuition fees or research grants, and expect to see returns: Either more jobs, more competitive national economy or a better life. So far so good. Unfortunately, too much "customer-ificatio…

Well, the underlying problem is high tuition and high faculty salaries. Faculty used to be like a monastery, where scholars could live a simple life to nerd in their topic of nerdhood. Now, my alma mater pays high-tooting faculty nearly a megabuck, pays typical faculty $180k, has $200 million building projects, yachts, and what-not. Tuition went up multifold too. I'm more than happy to pay a bunch of nerds $60k per y…

> Now, my alma mater pays high-tooting faculty nearly a megabuck, pays typical faculty $180k, has $200 million building projects, yachts, and what-not.

This is not relevant to the UK. Faculty do not get paid anywhere near this. They do not get paid lawyer or doctor money either, for the UK. Economics faculty who move from the UK to the US will come close to doubling their salary, as a lower bound.

Re: University of Leicester firing all pure math faculty

#93

Post by morelisp »

agumonkey wrote: post #91
kleiba wrote: post #15

I recently read Dijkstra's "On the fact that the Atlantic Ocean has two sides". [1] In vast parts, it's not much more than mildly disguised US-bashing (Dijkstra was always a grumpy old man) but that's not what caught my eye. What did was the fact that he describes the US research landscape as a system that orients itself around short-term projects and industry desires. Dijkstra clearly expresses his contempt for this…

The opposite is also true. I read a book about early electricity discoveries. People in Europe were all about the deep end theories. America.. pragmatism reigned supreme. As long as you can make something out of phenomenon you're good to go. The book said that by the time Edison made a light bulb, European academics were still debating unproven theories.

On the other hand, by the time Europeans made the WWW, American capitalists were still trying to figure out how to micromonetize resource transclusion.

Re: University of Leicester firing all pure math faculty

#94

Post by [deleted] »

morelisp wrote: post #90
chrisseaton wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, only if we go back as far as the medieval ages, so not in practice, which is what I said. Wikipedia explains > Thus, on the level of higher education, despite the European origin of the liberal arts college, the term liberal arts college usually denotes liberal arts colleges in the United States. With the exception of pioneering institutions such as Franklin University Switzerland (formerly known as Franklin Coll…

I am going to repeat my original point: > Pure math makes up two of the seven liberal arts. This is utterly impossible to understand as anything other than a reference the specific medieval seven liberal arts which do historically and practically underpin the definition of the unversity as distinct from other forms of tertiary education, not the "modern" concept of a liberal arts education. Go grind your political ax…

[deleted]

Re: University of Leicester firing all pure math faculty

#95

Post by agumonkey »

morelisp wrote: post #93
agumonkey wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The opposite is also true. I read a book about early electricity discoveries. People in Europe were all about the deep end theories. America.. pragmatism reigned supreme. As long as you can make something out of phenomenon you're good to go. The book said that by the time Edison made a light bulb, European academics were still debating unproven theories.

On the other hand, by the time Europeans made the WWW, American capitalists were still trying to figure out how to micromonetize resource transclusion.

Then www rose in the US while France was having meetings about what protocol to use for the minitel. It's and odd pattern.

Re: University of Leicester firing all pure math faculty

#96

Post by chrisseaton »

morelisp wrote: post #90
chrisseaton wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, only if we go back as far as the medieval ages, so not in practice, which is what I said. Wikipedia explains > Thus, on the level of higher education, despite the European origin of the liberal arts college, the term liberal arts college usually denotes liberal arts colleges in the United States. With the exception of pioneering institutions such as Franklin University Switzerland (formerly known as Franklin Coll…

I am going to repeat my original point: > Pure math makes up two of the seven liberal arts. This is utterly impossible to understand as anything other than a reference the specific medieval seven liberal arts which do historically and practically underpin the definition of the unversity as distinct from other forms of tertiary education, not the "modern" concept of a liberal arts education. Go grind your political ax…

Given that America has a literal 'Hamburger University' I'm not sure you can complain that a British university not having a pure maths department is some kind of dilution of the term.

It'd be illegal to call it 'Hamburger University' in the UK for comparison, as 'university' is a protected designation here and it wouldn't meet the standards for a university, while it does in the US.

(McDonald's does have the same training facility in the UK, but it doesn't claim to be a 'university' here or award 'degrees' like it does in the US.)

Re: University of Leicester firing all pure math faculty

#97

Post by kleiba »

barry-cotter wrote: post #92
woofie11 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the underlying problem is high tuition and high faculty salaries. Faculty used to be like a monastery, where scholars could live a simple life to nerd in their topic of nerdhood. Now, my alma mater pays high-tooting faculty nearly a megabuck, pays typical faculty $180k, has $200 million building projects, yachts, and what-not. Tuition went up multifold too. I'm more than happy to pay a bunch of nerds $60k per y…

> Now, my alma mater pays high-tooting faculty nearly a megabuck, pays typical faculty $180k, has $200 million building projects, yachts, and what-not. This is not relevant to the UK. Faculty do not get paid anywhere near this. They do not get paid lawyer or doctor money either, for the UK. Economics faculty who move from the UK to the US will come close to doubling their salary, as a lower bound.

I think you can safely say that for all of Europe.

Re: University of Leicester firing all pure math faculty

#98

Post by kleiba »

anticristi wrote: post #68
woofie11 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the underlying problem is high tuition and high faculty salaries. Faculty used to be like a monastery, where scholars could live a simple life to nerd in their topic of nerdhood. Now, my alma mater pays high-tooting faculty nearly a megabuck, pays typical faculty $180k, has $200 million building projects, yachts, and what-not. Tuition went up multifold too. I'm more than happy to pay a bunch of nerds $60k per y…

Nicely put. Some professors want monastery-level accountability with industry-level salary. Have the cake and eat it.

I'd say those are the minority - for most academics, doing the research is the most important thing, and salary second, or else, the CS departments of this world would be empty.

Re: University of Leicester firing all pure math faculty

#99

Post by redis_mlc »

pmiller2 wrote: post #28
morelisp wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of universities do not have a pure math faculty. If true this shocks me. Pure math makes up two of the seven liberal arts. The pure math department at my (US state) university had significantly higher status than the applied one, and this seemed to hold true for the other (also mostly state) universities my friends went to as well. Community colleges and technical schools? Sure. Colleges? OK I guess, if they…

I don't know of a single US research university that doesn't have a math department.

Pure math departments are important for identifying the outlier students who are capable of contributing to the field.

An entire department might only find one star per year (or decade), but that could advance a topic 100 years overall.

Occasionally a self-taught prodigy like Ramanajuan emerges, but society needs many more.

Re: University of Leicester firing all pure math faculty

#100

Post by stablenode »

cm2187 wrote: post #87
stablenode wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cm2187: I wonder if you realize that a significant factor in the US scientific prowess is a certain event in the XX century history of Europe which forced a huge number of scientists to move to the US because they weren't 'Aryan enough'. After said XX century event another wave of scientists arrived (or were brought) to the US, only these were 'quite Aryan' but facing career oblivion in Europe due to their past polit…

On your first point, it is certainly the case that many scientists came from abroad, and in fact that is still the case today, you don't need Nazi persecutions for that. But we are talking about whether the academic system produces game changing research, not where the researchers were born (in fact if anything,the fact that people are attracted by this model is a testimony to its effectiveness). As for the 90%, agre…

What exactly constitutes a 'major technological advance'? If we're counting Turing Awards by university affiliation, then I believe 90% is probably a good estimate for the US share (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Turing_Award_laureates...). If we're counting Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry and Medicine, it suddenly becomes less clear why this should be true (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_uni...), and if we're counting the number of Fields Medals (the most relevant award given the subject of the post), the numbers seem to suggest that the US contribution to pure mathematics is not as dominant as you might imagine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Fields_Medal_winners_b...

In any event, I think this is all getting rather silly. I was simply making the point that historically science in the US has benefited tremendously from having a large number of capable people that were trained within a different system. Where they were born is absolutely irrelevant. A certain W. von Braun was indeed an American, as were his 'major technological advances' that many in the US are rightly proud of, but he was very much a product of German science (I hope you don't find this point controversial).

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