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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

#201

Post by chirau »

Ifkaluva wrote: post #60
jryio wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A brain drain means the intelligent population emigrates to other countries. The narrative and data do not support Americans going abroad. I think you're referring to a lack of competitive education for those coming outside of America and choosing Europe / China to study. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_capital_flight

I think you’ve got it backwards. MIT used to be brain-draining China, India, Iran, Europe, etc into schools like MIT. The lower numbers mean this is happening less. There are likely multiple factors: becoming less attractive, their domestic options becoming more attractive, more aggressive immigration posture, etc

No. They have it right. Brain drain, by definition, is emigration of educated and skilled labor out of country or region in search of greener pastures.

America losing foreigners in education institutions is not 'brain drain' in the classical sense. There is no emigration (the drain) involved. America receiving all those students and skilled labor over the years was brain drain.

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

#202

Post by BeetleB »

fastaguy88 wrote: post #83
jvanderbot wrote: post #31

What a Rorschach blot. Comments range from AI to immigration to doomsday results for USA. The admins statement in TFA speaks more to financial policy and grant declines. Unfunded students are much less likely to accept an admission. That's just a fact of life.

There are no un-funded graduate (PhD) students in the sciences and engineering at MIT (or any other top-ranked graduate program). The number of graduate student admissions is directly tied to the amount of external funding. If the faculty do not have the grants, their departments cannot admit students.

Isn't that what the article is saying? Less research funding == Fewer admissions.

> The number of graduate student admissions is directly tied to the amount of external funding.

Minor quibble: It's not merely external funding. In many sciences (math, physics, chemistry), it's common for the department to promise funding through non-research means for a number of years. In my top school, I think physics students were guaranteed TA funding for 2 years (until they pass the qualifying exams and find a professor). Math students are almost always funded as TAs (the department guaranteed 6 years).

It's mostly engineering departments that don't do this.

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

#203

Post by bongoman42 »

elteto wrote: post #131
mcmcmc wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have $27 billion in their endowment. They are choosing not to fund those positions when they easily could on their own.

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…

Government is not great at picking up or creating ideas. Academia has to lead in that and then show government why it would be best for the nation to fund those. The government is good at long term funding for ideas that may not be the best for private sector right away but it should not be creating ideas themselves otherwise you would get things like Lysenkoism.

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

#204

Post by finolex1 »

cmiles8 wrote: post #155

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…

Not really relevant to this article, which is about graduate students in research programs, who get a stipend and don't pay anything. Of course, low stipends are also a big detractor for potential students

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

#205

Post by greenie_beans »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #196
r2_pilot wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't consign us here in Mississippi, voting in every election, to not be represented in a democratic society. It's hard enough living here without getting dogpiled by external people who never visit and think that just because our "representatives" are a certain way that everyone here is like them, instead of the messier reality that power structures here are misaligned with the actual population's collective will.

I lived in Texas, Mississippi, Florida before, so I’m unsure what you mean by not visiting. I didn’t list a state that I hadn’t lived in for at least 3 months. Unfortunately that was 5 years in Mississippi. Regardless what would you have us do? More autonomy for states? You can’t go out alone, and we have a nice red-blue state now to base a division on.

no, they are saying that by discarding mississippi, you are ignoring like 45%+ of the state that didn't vote for whatever politician you hate. and also you are ignoring the centuries of disenfranchisement that prevents more people from voting against whatever politician you hate. it's not a monolith. mississsippi is the blackest state in the union yet coastal liberals who are supposedly anti-racist are quick to throw out the state.

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

#206

Post by kjkjadksj »

potbelly83 wrote: post #199
gNucleusAI wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Education yes, research unfortunately no. I'm not saying research outside of academia is not possible, I'm just saying it's not taken seriously and this needs to change. We really do need to go back to the 19th century model of the researcher gentleman.

The researcher gentleman cannot afford their own cryo em. We aren’t doing the science of 1890 anymore.

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

#207

Post by AndrewKemendo »

r2_pilot wrote: post #141
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it’s time to split the country? We are so polarized with very different visions about the future and what is needed to reach and increase prosperity. Let Mississippi be Mississippi with Texas and Florida, let California find its own way with New York and Washington. Democracy is fine, but we are just too divided and either side thinks the other side is dragging all of us down, and refuse to believe it’s because…

Don't consign us here in Mississippi, voting in every election, to not be represented in a democratic society. It's hard enough living here without getting dogpiled by external people who never visit and think that just because our "representatives" are a certain way that everyone here is like them, instead of the messier reality that power structures here are misaligned with the actual population's collective will.

If there’s a “collective will” then why isn’t the population forcing its collective will on those power structures?

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

#208

Post by cmiles8 »

potbelly83 wrote: post #199
gNucleusAI wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Education yes, research unfortunately no. I'm not saying research outside of academia is not possible, I'm just saying it's not taken seriously and this needs to change. We really do need to go back to the 19th century model of the researcher gentleman.

A real shock to academia is that top research increasingly takes place outside universities. On many areas universities are now 5-10 years behind what’s happening in the private sector. That’s causing a lot of panic within the system and a growing stream of departures as PhDs favor the private sector over academic tracts.

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

#209

Post by dxdm »

brianjlogan wrote: post #133
slg wrote: 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…

There is historical precedent for uprisings. Those are usually messy and do not tend to leave most people doing the uprising better off.

Much more precedent for new elites putting themselves into a position of power while purporting to be channeling a popular uprising on behalf and for the benefit of the "common folk", who again do not end up better off for it, often quite the opposite.

It's sad and frustrating to see this play out again and again. As you say, you don't need hindsight to see how it aligns with history.

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

#210

Post by xienze »

blobbers wrote: post #146
hibikir wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a relatively widespread opinion 20 years ago. I had Roy Blunt, Republican senator from Missouri at the time, come to talk to us, telling us that he thought a science Ph.D should come with a green card stapled to it. But the politics of immigration never let small bills through, as people wanted bigger ones, and the bigger ones always had things that would risk filibusters. And we all know that the current US…

It's sad that our government can't pass a bill without it being a katamari ball. One thing, discuss, vote. No "hey if we give you this, you give us this." just simple "do most of us agree on this?" level politics. That's real democracy, not the crap we have today.

Well the popular argument is that it takes so long to pass any kind of bill that smaller bills would just mean more bills and a bigger backlog. I don't really buy that.

The real reason is that it's easy to sneak stuff into a bill, so why not? That and trying to attack political opponents by joining something politically disastrous to to an otherwise uncontroversial bill.

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