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A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

president.mit.edu

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

#181

Post by JumpCrisscross »

1-more wrote: post #145
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people leaving their home countries to make money in the US? To study and work, yes. We learned the trick when the Nazis chased off their scientists, doubled down on it by capturing Nazi scientists, and then developed it into a multi-decade advantage throughout the Cold War and the 1990s. Looking back, we started fucking it up with the Iraq War and financial crisis (see: A123 bankruptcy giving China its EV industry…

Highly recommend The Man from the Future biography of John von Neumann. We got The Martians for a steal because Europe was too hostile to minorities and we got the Manhattan Project and computers out of the deal. Never gonna have a brain drain arbitrage opportunity like that again.

Thanks! Really appreciate the recommendation!

> Never gonna have a brain drain arbitrage opportunity like that again.

It’s sort of there for the taking for American elites. Someone just has to roll out a real red carpet.

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

#182

Post by tsunamifury »

Academia is fundamentally in for a long and unstoppable decline due to population changes and birth rates.

But I had assumed we’d end up with a bunching effect that would push up demand for MIT rather than down. (When there is an over decline in something, often remaining participants bunch harder into the most desirable remaining)

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

#183

Post by ethagnawl »

dzonga wrote: post #136

all because some cry baby in the White House. destroying some of America's best institutions & best returns ROI wise - talent pipeline, R&D. unfortunately the damage from these things take at least 10 years to be felt throughout the economy. & then blame will fall on someone that's not responsible.

It's truly baffling. We're hurting ourselves and helping our fri/enemies with one stroke.

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

#184

Post by mullingitover »

slg wrote: post #96
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #16

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.

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

Or they'll just say "History doesn't repeat but it often rhymes."[1]

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8802602/

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

#185

Post by geodel »

chvid wrote: post #36
alberto467 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all, the US is still the world leader in research institutions. And I say this as an European, we’re miles behind really. You have to make a lot more fuck ups for us to catch you.

I think the highest ranked technical universities by the end of this decade will be Chinese. Things are accelerating more than I expected.

And there is no clamor Chinese green card either in politicians in China for students coming from other countries or in people outside coming to China. And if China will be having highest ranking technical universities, it means immigration is not a necessity for technical excellence or ranking as many keep alluding to.

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

#188

Post by arenaninja »

jrflo wrote: 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…

I was disillusioned with academia before I started. We had a candid talk during undergrad with a grad student who was a TA in our class and he laid it out for us: there wouldn't be enough jobs in the US for our small graduating class each year so if you needed a job to support yourself it would not make financial sense.

I stopped then and there, maybe one or two classmates continued. That was almost 20 years ago.

I'm thankful someone told us the truth and I made a career in a different field.

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

#189

Post by Zigurd »

slg wrote: post #96
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #16

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.

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

Some of "we" were whipped into a frenzy of resentment against science, culture, and awareness of our mixed bag of history. That's how those decisions were enabled.

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

#190

Post by snark42 »

loeg wrote: post #140
elteto wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fund them to do what exactly? Come up with their own research ideas? You got the pipeline backwards. The government picks the research areas/priorities then allocates funding for those, and universities apply and compete to get grants. _Then_, once a grant is given to a school, is funding for labs and graduate students allocated. If the government has no interest in doing research and provides no funding then schools…

That is how it usually works, but again, MIT has tens of billions of dollars. They could literally write their own grants.

Much of those billions of dollars are contractually limited in how they can use both the principal and gains so it's really not that simple.
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