181–190 of 214 posts
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> First off, most of this funding will go to a building. What a waste.
Some time back I read a line in article "Government has deluded itself into thinking that building institutions is same as institution buildings" This seems to apply here.
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I worked in the Broad building at Caltech (Eli Broad), and I watched for 2 years as they demoed the parking lot outside my office to build the 200 million dollar Chen neuroscience building. It is a complete and total waste of money, and I say that cognizant of arguments like 'attracting talent'...etc. At one point we calculated the number of neuroscience postdocs we could hire for that money and easily came to the co…
Donor behavior such as this comes down to human psychology and neuroscience. * Tribalism: Humans like people who "are like them", it's easier to relate. Thus, IME, Stanford grads prefer other Stanford-branded people. Or at least crême de la creme Ivy. Especially compared to the plebs and the proles. * Vanity: Donors find it appealing that the structure will be around for a long time, prominently and proudly emblazone…
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I worked in the Broad building at Caltech (Eli Broad), and I watched for 2 years as they demoed the parking lot outside my office to build the 200 million dollar Chen neuroscience building. It is a complete and total waste of money, and I say that cognizant of arguments like 'attracting talent'...etc. At one point we calculated the number of neuroscience postdocs we could hire for that money and easily came to the co…
Donor behavior such as this comes down to human psychology and neuroscience. * Tribalism: Humans like people who "are like them", it's easier to relate. Thus, IME, Stanford grads prefer other Stanford-branded people. Or at least crême de la creme Ivy. Especially compared to the plebs and the proles. * Vanity: Donors find it appealing that the structure will be around for a long time, prominently and proudly emblazone…
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This is a very fair concern. First off, most of this funding will go to a building. The rest will go mostly to an endowment. The concentration of mega-gifts at the top has very perverse impacts. Harvard built a $100M building a few years ago that is used by a total of 100 people a year. Philanthropy combines prestige, PR, and “legacy” in a way that massively overvalued those three vs. any kind of measurable impact. T…
>First off, most of this funding will go to a building. The rest will go mostly to an endowment. Academic institutions are also tax-exempt, therefore don't pay any tax on the profits of any endowment or real-estate investment gains. The rise of the ivy-league schools becoming glorified tax-free holding companies, with education side-gigs, corresponds with the bloat in academic administration. https://observer.com/200…
Why? For tax purposes.
Upon first hearing this I was shocked and disappointed. Over time I've lowered my hopes and expectations, and come to accept it for what it is:
Old, elite, uber-wealthy white men at the top, who want it to stay that way.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Stanford+president
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Marc_Tessier-Lavigne_at...
References:
"The Stanford Empire", by Mercury News
> Stanford's vast holdings. Stanford, Silicon Valley's largest property owner, controls more than 5,000 acres in Palo Alto and unincorporated Santa Clara County. On that land are the university's sprawling campus, a shopping center, tech offices, apartment buildings and entire residential neighborhoods.
> The value of Stanford’s empire is larger than those of Google, Apple and Intel combined.
https://extras.mercurynews.com/whoowns/stanford.html
"How Stanford Came to Dominate the Landscape in Silicon Valley", by KQED
> The value of Stanford's real estate empire is greater than the holdings of Google, Apple and Cisco combined.
https://www.kqed.org/news/11781771/how-stanford-became-the-l...
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Colleges should offer a Bachelor of Science in Social Engineering. It would consist of spending four years writing “social engineering does not work” on a blackboard over and over.
Public health has a history of social engineering, sometimes successful.
You can educate people and provide them with low cost, high benefit options. But you can’t change human nature or brow beat people into having different priorities than they do.
I am concerned about the incredible concentration of money and resources into a few academic institutions. Obviously Stanford is an incredible school, but I am not sure Stanford will do more with $1B than 10 2nd tier schools would do with $100M each.
Is that true though? There's the idea of the 10x programmer, and from looking at academia, such thing as a 10x researcher as well. In biology, the median 100th-ranked university professor is making incredibly incremental contributions (like applying a well known technique to the 300th gene). The average top university professor is making groundbreaking achievements. I almost view it as the opposite -- if you gave the…
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To be clear, you're asserting that by donating $1.1 billion in cash, they're likely getting more than that sum multiplied by their marginal tax rate in tax reduction? I'm honestly curious what the loopholes would be.
Not a donation to a university. However, rich people set up their own 501(c)(3) organizations to which they are boards of to get free flights, hotels, meals, etc from. Basically, instead of spending that money directly, they "spend" it via donations to their 501c3, and their 501c3 sends them on trips
they donate to their own 501c3, and that 501c3 can donate to the next thing that makes the actual headlines. But the important thing for the conversations had here is that their own 501c3 can also invest and grow money. It can have lots and lots of capital firepower. When it uses that, there is no tax deduction for the owner. And in an article or headline, there is no information to extrapolate whether they were motivated by a tax deduction. thats my main point.
From my perspective, People are so desperate to find an issue with a large money movement that it is clouding their ability to understand what to even look at whether there is an abuse, advantage or not.
I am concerned about the incredible concentration of money and resources into a few academic institutions. Obviously Stanford is an incredible school, but I am not sure Stanford will do more with $1B than 10 2nd tier schools would do with $100M each.
Is that true though? There's the idea of the 10x programmer, and from looking at academia, such thing as a 10x researcher as well. In biology, the median 100th-ranked university professor is making incredibly incremental contributions (like applying a well known technique to the 300th gene). The average top university professor is making groundbreaking achievements. I almost view it as the opposite -- if you gave the…
In programming, if everyone would "just" be good enough, everyone could the elusive 10x programmer. In research, even if everyone would be the equivalent of the 10x programmer, there is simply often a lot of "boring" work to be done, such as what you dismissed as incredibly incremental contribution, to prepare the foundation for the next breakthrough. That means that "10x researchers" could, for various reasons including luck, end up in the 100th percentile because they have chosen a field that is not yet ready for a breakthrough (think, e.g. ML researchers slogging through the AI winter, wo didn't stick with ML until hardware became fast enough). Being the person making the groundbraking achievements means standing "on the shoulder of giants" as someone said a few centuries ago.
I wouldn't be surprised if today there are more "10x researchers" out there than there are breakthroughs waiting to be made.
