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How the United States Gave Up Being a Science Superpower

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Re: How the United States Gave Up Being a Science Superpower

#11

Post by roxolotl »

spamizbad wrote: post #2

This saddens me greatly. I think to certain people, this is viewed as a necessary trade-off to curb the political power and influence of the so-called "Professional Managerial Class" in the United States, due to fears that a version of James Burnham's prediction[1] would come true. When this discourse comes up on sites like Twitter, and people ask why we're doing it, supporters of these cuts ultimately lay the blame…

I think the trauma argument is spot on here. The pandemic exposed the tenuous nature of the system we all exist in and for many that was simply too much. It is a deeply disconcerting thing to really sit with the knowledge that we depend upon systems so complex that no single person can fix or manage or describe them and that small perturbations can cause damage that is visible to everyone.

When that was all laid bare during the pandemic the reaction was to demand that "we" take back the power to control the system. For some this meant quietly covering the system back up, for others it means tearing it down and rebuilding it.

Of course that isn't to excuse the system, or blame the trauma. Traumatic reactions to mass death, dislocation, and disruption are expected. The system is also very far from perfect. However typically rational and effective solutions don't come from responses like we're seeing.

Re: How the United States Gave Up Being a Science Superpower

#12

Post by the_af »

> Researchers mustn’t be complacent. They must communicate the difference between eliminating ideologically objectionable programmes and undermining the entire research ecosystem.

This is a weird statement. Researchers -- everyone, really -- must communicate that eliminating whole areas of research because the current administration deems them "ideologically objectionable" is suicidal. What is this, a dictatorship?

Re: How the United States Gave Up Being a Science Superpower

#13

Post by spamizbad »

GenZ_RiseUp wrote: post #7
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the book describe how there's a professional managerial class that took over higher education inflating its costs, degrading its services, undermining its ideals, watering down it's standards? Colleges need to get back to their mission and ditch the sports, drinking, non-academic facilities. Get back to teaching, standards and research and stop ripping off students to backbreaking loan debt.

And dare I add to your points - actually fail students when their standard of work is not good enough? There seems to be no repercussions regarding poor quality work in the current MBA/business management undergrad space (I only speak to these, as I familiar with them) with an attitude of (actively enabled by colleges) pass entitlement and grade inflation from the students.

How is cutting cancer research funding going to produce more a robust and academically rigorous MBA program?

The correlation seems to work the other way, based on MBA program rankings: https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-business-sc...

Re: How the United States Gave Up Being a Science Superpower

#14

Post by AnimalMuppet »

spamizbad wrote: post #8
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the book describe how there's a professional managerial class that took over higher education inflating its costs, degrading its services, undermining its ideals, watering down it's standards? Colleges need to get back to their mission and ditch the sports, drinking, non-academic facilities. Get back to teaching, standards and research and stop ripping off students to backbreaking loan debt.

> Colleges need to get back to their mission and ditch the sports, drinking, non-academic facilities. Get back to teaching, standards and research and stop ripping off students to backbreaking loan debt. Can you explain how cutting research funding achieve these goal? Especially since many of the schools most impacted by these cuts are very much not party or college sports schools. Those most impacted are R1 schools:…

Cutting administration achieves these goals. (It's not the skyrocketing number of tenured professors that is driving college costs.)

Now, do you have to cut research in order to cut administration? Research takes a lot of administration, but that should be paid for by the research, not by the students.

Re: How the United States Gave Up Being a Science Superpower

#15

Post by newsclues »

spamizbad wrote: post #8
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the book describe how there's a professional managerial class that took over higher education inflating its costs, degrading its services, undermining its ideals, watering down it's standards? Colleges need to get back to their mission and ditch the sports, drinking, non-academic facilities. Get back to teaching, standards and research and stop ripping off students to backbreaking loan debt.

> Colleges need to get back to their mission and ditch the sports, drinking, non-academic facilities. Get back to teaching, standards and research and stop ripping off students to backbreaking loan debt. Can you explain how cutting research funding achieve these goal? Especially since many of the schools most impacted by these cuts are very much not party or college sports schools. Those most impacted are R1 schools:…

It’s the rotten bureaucracy (bloated administration) in academia that results in the symptoms of non academic spending. The root cause is the management that is not allocating resources to the core mission and instead focusing on administrative costs (salaries), and expensive facilities that aren’t academically necessary.

You don’t get the professional managerial class investing in world class research labs, they spend more on sports!

Re: How the United States Gave Up Being a Science Superpower

#16

Post by intermerda »

> No syncretistic faith can withstand analytical criticism. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fasci...

It's by design.

Aand of course this submission gets flagged.

Re: How the United States Gave Up Being a Science Superpower

#17

Post by arisbe__ »

Professionalization and high employee debt means that the employees will choose sel-prezervation over creative inquiry and truth seeking.

Carring on with this too blantly and over time, it seems self-undermining.

I'd guess Science died the day it was born as "Science". So being a Science superpower really means being a gatekeeping Science-containment Superpower. Antiscience?

Re: How the United States Gave Up Being a Science Superpower

#18

Post by igtztorrero »

The Manhattan Project is the most important example of the power that can be achieved through collaborative work between the private sector and the government. It allowed us to win the war and surpass Hitler's scientists. All thanks to Roosevelt's understanding of the letter from Einstein, Szilard, Teller & Wigner.

Re: How the United States Gave Up Being a Science Superpower

#19

Post by dashundchen »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #3
spamizbad wrote: post #2

This saddens me greatly. I think to certain people, this is viewed as a necessary trade-off to curb the political power and influence of the so-called "Professional Managerial Class" in the United States, due to fears that a version of James Burnham's prediction[1] would come true. When this discourse comes up on sites like Twitter, and people ask why we're doing it, supporters of these cuts ultimately lay the blame…

Does the book describe how there's a professional managerial class that took over higher education inflating its costs, degrading its services, undermining its ideals, watering down it's standards? Colleges need to get back to their mission and ditch the sports, drinking, non-academic facilities. Get back to teaching, standards and research and stop ripping off students to backbreaking loan debt.

> Get back to teaching, standards and research and stop ripping off students to backbreaking loan debt.

That's not really what the current Trump/GOP/Desantis policy, if you could call it that, is about.

It's about weaponizing funding to exert direct government control on what is taught and how it operates. Government approved speech only.

The current admin's letter to Harvard demanded governmenr direct control over department operation, course materials and teaching staff

They pitch this to thir base as revenge on "woke", because they've primed their base, the majority of whom have never attended college, or have not stepped foot on a campus in decades, to distrust educational institutions.

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