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A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

president.mit.edu

171–180 of 756 posts

Re: A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

#172
post #147

Besides the people in this thread bemoaning the state of research funding, international students, etc. (all of which are valid), a lot of people are becoming disillusioned with academia. Probably 80% of the recent PhD grads I know are looking to leave academia, despite the fact that they went into it to pursue a career in academia. The median science PhD takes 6 years now, and is grueling work for terrible pay, all…

80% is high!

Re: A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

#174

Academia is about to go through a generational reset. The system is broken and the market only tolerates broken systems for so long. There are a ton of great things that come out of universities but it’s also clear that a model of charging folks well into the six-figures for a useless degree that doesn’t prepare them for the workforce is dead and a reckoning is underway. Many schools will fail and shut down. Of those…

there are tons of alternative ways to get education , or do research

Re: A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

#177
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, it’s called a brain drain and it’s why until recently America held a vice grip on groundbreaking research and its commercialization.

It's more complicated than this, The US has multiple challenge in its own domestic talent pipeline. In a world of finite slots for elite production and elite employment the US must own the outcome of allocating those slots internationally and the resulting under-employment of its domestic population. Whether these slots should be finite or not is an independent problem, however for various reasons the slots are curre…

> US must own the outcome of allocating those slots internationally and the resulting under-employment of its domestic population

Slots are being cut across the board. For international students as well as domestic ones. Also, we’re talking about a couple hundred seats. And again, of graduate students.

> Whether these slots should be finite or not

They’re grad students. Extremely skilled. Artisanly trained, pretty much. There are fundamental limits on how many we can productively have. I’m guessing none at MIT are wasted.

Re: A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

#179
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historians looking back at this era are going to struggle to understand why we made the decisions we did.

Lots of historical precedent for an intellectual elite ignoring the perception and needs of the common folk leading to an uprising. I'd imagine every great(in scale/importance) uprising/political tumult had some aspect of "but they're ruining everything!" Everything for intellectuals and people with ties to the system that was functioning for that minority. Coal miners don't care that international students aren't co…

> intellectual elite ignoring the perception and needs of the common folk

Isn’t that what the common folk chose? Was some of that not clear before the election?

Re: A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

#180
post #147

Besides the people in this thread bemoaning the state of research funding, international students, etc. (all of which are valid), a lot of people are becoming disillusioned with academia. Probably 80% of the recent PhD grads I know are looking to leave academia, despite the fact that they went into it to pursue a career in academia. The median science PhD takes 6 years now, and is grueling work for terrible pay, all…

Can you give some context the grad student union and how it intends to fight the explotatiove nature of the academia?

> how it intends to fight the explotatiove nature of the academia

Not really "intends". They already have a negotiated contract with the university to ensure wages, healthcare, overtime protections, etc.

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