171–180 of 180 posts
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It happens at scale. UK universities are also heavily subsidised by Chinese students. I also, where I am, I don't really see these students working in part-time jobs to pay the bills.
I assume the underpaid labor they were talking about was the PhD.
The is a psyop, there arent that many science jobs, and a PHD from mississipi state is not "talent"
why not
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This isn't really a culture problem, IMO, as much as a funding one. My group currently employs two people of the description you have, and it does reduce the need for students (and honestly, increase productivity). It's also by far the most stressful part of my job. Funding them involves writing multiple grants per year (because the expectation of any particular grant is low, even with a decent hit rate) and I am con…
The funding problem is a cultural problem though. Religious right wing politicians in the US have attacked science and education funding at every opportunity. Science and education produce ideas that are at odds with right wing religious orthodoxy, so those things must not be allowed in society.
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If the culture normalized such that a much larger proportion of research was conducted by permanent, non-faculty, research employees, this would both reduce the need for so many students and increase the jobs available for students, and create a new employment niche with a different balance of teaching/administration/research. It would basically be turning "post doc" into an actual career rather than a stop over. Thi…
What you’re describing sounds a lot like the Department of Energy national labs. They have (or had) many permanent-track research roles without teaching obligations, where scientists can have long stable research careers. The problem, as always, is funding. In the US, the federal govt is essentially the only “customer” of basic research. There’s some private funding, often from kooky millionaires who want someone to…
It certainly doesn't seem to be paying a lot for post docs, grad students, (who are either contributing their own tuition or getting it contributed by someone else anyway), adjuncts, or other non-professor faculty, since they famously make starvation wages.
I'm being a bit facetious, since tuition has "transparent" line items stating how much goes to what, but university revenue streams are a bit baffling. Mountains of money go in, and mountains of money go out, but the two seem to have a very indirect relationship at times.
And I know, the common answer is that it goes to some nebulous "administration", but the executive administrative staff, while reasonably well compensated, make a pretty small portion of the overall budget, and the rest of the admin seems like it could be more reasonably be split into the actual services and departments they're administering, which, again, seem adequately funded between grants, donors, and tuition. So I'm not clear what all this ambiguous "administration" that's not executive staff and not tied directly to, say, health insurance (which gets paid for as part of tuition) or research (grants). What are they administering??
How does this compare to the fraction of foreign students studying in other countries and choosing to remain there?
It's hard to compare across countries. No other country has anything like the US's research-university system, although China is working on it. But foreign students in China probably aren't hoping to be able to live there for the rest of their lives—China's immigration policies are considerably more xenophobic. The UK might be the closest comparison? Generally speaking, American exceptionalism is nonsense. The US isn…
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Thats interesting, I don't know if I have ever seen this kind of labor market logic applied to science before. Is this an agreed upon idea? In my mind, science and the kind of focused research it entails is kind of definitionally distinct from something like "innovation." Like, frankly, yes, I want a stream of widgets; if that means consistent units of research done to contribute to an important area/problem, which a…
Are you suggesting science and innovation are distinct? Scientific progress is largely driven by the “Steve Jobs” of sciences. Only a tiny fraction of papers remain relevant. So that means the quality of the average paper doesn’t matter as much as the quality of the best paper.
That said, multiple discovery seems to be more common nowadays due to the rapid diffusion of information, which means that most people are operating in roughly the same information environment (initial conditions) when they start their research. It is interesting how often multiple discovery happens when you start to look closely at this.
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not sure I understand, I read a lot of research papers from China.
My read: China is seen as a serious geopolitical rival that the United States must beat in a shooting or Cold or AI or war. As a result PHDs to China as an export would be a negative impact, not a positive one potentially.
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My read: China is seen as a serious geopolitical rival that the United States must beat in a shooting or Cold or AI or war. As a result PHDs to China as an export would be a negative impact, not a positive one potentially.
America gave China its space (and ballistic missile) program when they deported Qian Xuesen in 1955.
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> The isolationist and xenophobic rhetoric of recent years is mostly a reaction to a growing sense that increasingly few Americans are benefiting from global goodwill and development. I'm not sure I buy your claim that this is the reason for the rhetoric. And if you're right that this is the reason for the rhetoric, it's extremely flawed reasoning.
Diminishing material conditions makes a fertil breeding ground for right wing nationalism (isolationism and xenophobia). It's a pattern being replicated all over the world. UK citizens don't have high heat bills and sewage leaking into their rivers because of privatization and Brexit, it's because there's too many refugees! Of course it's incorrect, but without the diminishing material conditions, it's a lot harder t…
And imagined diminishing material conditions are just as effective as actual diminishing material conditions!
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Tried to follow your link. It says: "This program is not available in your country". Wonder why...censorship?
Maybe try a vpn? It is an European production, I am not sure, but there could be some rights limitation. It is available till end of January. Protonvpn is free and has EUR servers. Bit of a shame for the hassle though, the documentary is very good and the topics it touches are rarely highlighted. So give it an other try.