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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

#161

Post by JumpCrisscross »

bflesch wrote: post #151
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Interesting comparison. From the Wikipedia [1]: > For the early part of his reign, he is said to have been "good, generous, fair and community-spirited", but increasingly self-indulgent, cruel, sadistic, extravagant, and sexually perverted thereafter, an insane, murderous tyrant who demanded and received worship as a living god, humiliated the Senate, and planned to make his horse a consul. [...] > During his brief r…

I, Claudius does a solid fictionalization of the man. (Suetonius if you’re craving drier.)

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

#162

Post by busterarm »

coryrc wrote: post #137
busterarm wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/num…

We're (at least) 10 years into this mess now and still everyone is focused on restructuring our systems and prosecutions instead of putting forward a platform that broadly appeals to enough Americans to decisively win elections.

What I said applies to both parties. We're not really all that different but all the incentives align towards pleasing extremists. Do you really need any more evidence of this than people getting shot and people/press generally being okay with it?

Anything you build can be exploited against you when you're on the other side of the power balance. The solution is truly moving politics to the center.

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

#163

Post by cj »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #123
busterarm wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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…

> we are just too divided

I challenge this.

I think the TV media, social media, and politicians like to make us feel like we are very divided because that's what gets "the base" to give a shit.

But if you throw away all of the garbage on TV and the garbage online, how divided are we? Really?

I think if you strip away the distractions, the people in conservative Florida have a lot more in common with people in liberal NY than one might assume.

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

#164

Post by IncreasePosts »

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

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

#165

Post by corygarms »

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.

Wow you just made me realize that Elon Musk net worth is roughly 30x the value of the entire MIT endowment fund.

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

#166

Post by armchairhacker »

htrp wrote: post #5

MIT Current Graduate Student are 41% international. https://facts.mit.edu/enrollment-statistics/

Every prestigious (STEM) college I’m aware of, a large ratio of graduate students and professors are foreign.

Even in the EU, graduate students and professors come from other continents.

Many are Indian and Chinese, but there are people from all over Europe, South America, Africa (certainly Australia but oddly I don’t know any OTOH)…it’s very diverse. But everyone speaks English.

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

#167

Post by graemep »

schnitzelstoat wrote: post #56
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.

Yeah, in Europe we simply don't have the money. And with an aging population and stagnant/declining productivity that seems unlikely to improve in the future. If anyone is going to overtake the US, it will be China.

Not investing well in education, health and infrastructure is one of the causes of the decline of Europe, and stagnant productivity.

Its not even so much as money not being spent, as money being spent badly. In the UK money is wasted on having too many universities and too many undergraduates. There are badly thought out commercial research subsidies. Schools are driven my metrics in a large scale proof of Goodheart's (Campbell's ?) law.

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

#169

Post by rfergie »

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

Has this changed recently?

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