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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

#131

Post by elteto »

mcmcmc wrote: post #59
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.

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 don’t have projects to work on and no money to hire graduate students.

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

#132

Post by loeg »

xnx wrote: post #65

> MIT: 20% drop in incoming graduate students This is kind of MIT's choice, right? They could change tuition or admission and have 20% more incoming graduate students.

Yes, and it's even spelled out explicitly earlier in the letter.

> For departments across the Institute, the funding uncertainty I talked about has made them cautious about admitting new graduate students.

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

#133

Post by brianjlogan »

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.

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 coming to the US anymore. That's not an important factor for them.

Edit: My point here is that you don't need hindsight to see how this aligns with historic precedent.

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

#134

Post by [deleted] »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #53
groundzeros2015 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t the brain drain people leaving their home countries to make money in the US?

> 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…

[deleted]

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

#135

Post by bensyverson »

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.

Sounds like everything is fine then

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

#136

Post by dzonga »

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.

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

#137

Post by coryrc »

busterarm wrote: post #93
andix wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people decided that this sucks and have spoken. Dear god, make America stupid again!

So you're suggesting our systems should be less democratic, then? Maybe opposing points of view should pick better candidates that will actually win elections. That's how it works, right?

Our systems need to be MORE democratic!

First Pass The Post is democratic, but the worst way of it. In most districts, 40-49% of voters are disenfranchised by gerrymandering.

Mixed Member Proportional is far more representative. If you assume certain minority groups vote as a bloc, then you can't gerrymander them away like our current system does. The proportion of people not getting representation is capped by 1/number_of_reps.

The whole "republicans in Senate stop the government from doing anything" needs to end. Parliamentary systems means the legislative body and head of state agree to work together. Our system means deadlock most of the time.

Finally, "senior members" of the parties in both houses are the only ones who decide what bills can be voted on. That's not democratic. Every member should be able to bring at least some bills up for an up-or-down vote. Make them vote down "healthcare for veterans" instead of killing it in committee or amending it to add "only if you strip women of bodily autonomy".

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

#138

Post by notahacker »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #99
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.

Eh, do we struggle with Caligula? He’s seen as he was—a joke. I imagine this era will be seen similarly unless we manage to capstone the era with nukes.

We'd probably struggle to understand Caligula if he'd been popularly elected after he went mad by an electorate that got to listen to his madness on television...

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

#140

Post by loeg »

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…

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