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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

#221

Post by dfxm12 »

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…

grueling work for terrible pay, all for difficult job prospects given the current market

Is the grass generally greener though?

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

#222

Post by chanux »

alberto467 wrote: post #23
mrhottakes wrote: post #8

Good. The US is reaping what it sows, and other research institutions will become the new leaders. Stinks for Americans, but the world will be better off overall.

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.

FWIW: https://theconversation.com/china-surpasses-us-in-research-s...

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

#223

Post by 999900000999 »

It's ok.

The top colleges are arguably now in China.

China is providing free education in many poor African countries. Chinese is one of many subjects offered.

Of course, a smart African college student will have no issue learning English, Chinese, as well her home countries language.

The future belongs to China. We're elevating fine institutions such as Liberty University and celebrating comedians and edge lords.

China celebrates engineers.

Then again.

No country is perfect, China also has an over abundance of educated without enough meaningful work for them.

I sorta think a UBI( needs to cover housing, food and at least a small amount of leisure activities) is the way to go.

The end goal of automation is we only need a small percentage of people working after all.

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

#224

Post by simonw »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #164
simonw wrote: post #152

"due largely to the heavy new 8% tax on our endowment returns, a burden for MIT and only a few other peer schools" I went digging. Turns out that's a 2025 "Big Beautiful Bill" thing, which raised that from 1.4% to 8% but only for colleges where the endowment exceeds $2,000,000 per student. Which meant MIT, Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Harvard. https://waysandmeans.house.gov/2025/05/14/ways-and-means-vot... boasts that…

Wow. If they think 8% is heavy they should see how much in taxes their janitors are paying

Presumably 0% on their 401k returns, which is the more appropriate comparison point to an endowment.

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

#225

Post by buran77 »

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…

> 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.

I think this was always the case. The disillusionment isn't new and not all who are disillusioned will act on it. The rest just put their PhD where the money is, as always.

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

#226

Post by biophysboy »

epolanski wrote: post #90
dangus wrote: post #47

We have never seen a presidential administration misunderstand soft power so badly. US universities were an incredible blessing to the “brand” of the USA. Foreign students come to the US, pay an inflated full sticker price, subsidizing US students, and learn from top educators who generally have a lens of Western values. Many of these students pursue permanent citizenship and bring with them new ideas, businesses, an…

Jm2c, but I really don't believe the "top educators" argument. People keep mixing correlation with causation. The reason why ivy league universities have generally stronger students is related to input: acceptance rates are lower and the weaker candidates are pre filtered. Public universities around the world, obviously get a much wider variance in the student pool. But that's about it. There is strong evidence that…

Obviously there is a selection effect that confounds any causal comparisons between those who do and do not get into MIT. But the better counterfactual is students who are accepted but do not attend. A diff-in-diff study with these two groups would be a better test. There are unique features of MIT: more money, elite network, etc. I do share your skepticism though - I've worked w/ MIT people before. I think they are very smart but also very lucky.

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

#228

Post by Retric »

SecretDreams wrote: post #213
paulmist wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The same ways the average Joe / Jane / Jon Bon Jovi are fighting their exploitation by big tech and the government. Silent weeping and lots of Reddit posts.

Despite all the propaganda, unions work. In this case they got better pay and benefits.

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

#229

Post by cucumber3732842 »

greenie_beans wrote: post #205
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So? How's that any different than everyone in Buffalo just having to bend over and take it because NYC and Albany want to do spreadsheets and services instead of factories?

No state is a monolith.

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

#230

Post by kenferry »

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…

Ok, but not what this article is about at all. Six figures is for undergrads. The issue here is that PIs don’t have the money to support graduate students, who are typically fully supported.
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