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Could science leave the university?

mindingthecampus.org

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Re: Could science leave the university?

#21

Post by tgv »

lacy_tinpot wrote: post #14
spfzero wrote: post #3

One thing that might be a problem here, is the ongoing oversupply of advanced degrees. This creates a ready supply of replacement faculty whenever needed. As science faculty leave the university, the university has the option of easily replacing them one-by-one, probably at lower cost, and are left with no need to hire the new scientists' organization. The research quality might drop, but the university's reputation…

There can't be an oversupply of advanced degrees. Rather if there is an "oversupply" it means that we can't adequately absorb the intellectual capacity of the population. This in itself is a problem that needs to be addressed.

Why should that be a problem? But it doesn't even need to be true. If the quality of the advanced degree drops sufficiently, there's no problem, except one of academic credibility.

Re: Could science leave the university?

#22

Post by robwwilliams »

Of course it is all way more complicated than “evil blood sucking admin” vs “noble scientist”.

1. Administrators have their own “owners”: namely federal and state funders, certification and evaluation authorities. All can make and break a research institution.

2. Many administrators are or have been researchers. They are not unaware of these core problems.

3. I agree that administrative bloat is very real. The typical excuse us “but look at all the new regulatory mandates.”

I live next door to a federal lab. They do not have a teaching mission but they appear to have even more byzantine administrative oversight than we do. In fact, our university research is nimble and light in comparison.

Re: Could science leave the university?

#23

Post by ISL »

This piece misses the realities of funding and labor for top-tier science.

Labor: Graduate students are inexpensive and doing the work for love. Without them, science becomes extremely expensive (and more effective, but not more-effective enough to, apparently, be worth the price of staff scientists).

Funding: Good luck getting the NSF to fund your proposal at actual market rate, especially if you don't intend to educate any graduate students.

There is a lot of societal value in basic science, but the returns happen on decadal and multi-decadal scales. Few non-governmental partners, other than philanthropic former scientists or science philanthropists (thank you, Keck and Simons Foundations!) have the vision and commitment to reap and sow scientific progress.

Science has always been free to leave the university, and it often does, but the lack of self-emergent long-term science institutions (Where's the private NIST, LHC, LIGO, or Webb?) suggests that it's a tough road to travel. When there's enough near-term promise, as in quantum-computing or genomic sequencing, industry can leap in and drive things forward.

Re: Could science leave the university?

#24

Post by unclesaamm »

This is conservative lobbying spam. The umbrella group producing this document is called the "National Academy of Scholars" (NAS), which publishes articles about "globalists" and is funded by conservative donors (see https://www.nas.org/storage/app/media/New%20Documents/annual...).

Annoyingly, the National Academy of Scholars was named in a way that collides in the namespace with the (actually reputable) National Academy of Sciences (publishers of PNAS).

Re: Could science leave the university?

#25

Post by abeppu »

I think we should push for the other direction: let's get the unnecessary administrators out of universities. In particular, let's make schools show that greater than k% of their budget goes to actual instruction in order to be eligible to receive federal student loan dollars (and the threshold should rise over time).

It's still really silly to me that schools push towards having a lot of instruction (their core product!) done by adjuncts whose contracts may or may not be renewed for any term, but they have so many administrators and non-instruction staff who are full time with pretty great job security.

Re: Could science leave the university?

#26

Post by toomim »

hospitalJail wrote: post #13
jleyank wrote: post #2

If you want to do science and publish , you need something academia and possibly government. Pretty much all commercial science is closed source. And we’ve run short of English dukes paying for interesting people to come and work.

What do you mean? I have a website and I publish 3 or 4 times a year. Sure I had to do marketing/outreach to get a following, but I have PhDs in my field reading my side-work I'm producing in the evenings. This stuff is science, without all the fluff and grander. At the end of the day, my readers do go out and test my claims, isn't that more science than academia's replication crisis? I do something that is nearly fr…

Can you share your website? I'd love to see examples of your research and marketing/outreach.

Re: Could science leave the university?

#27

Post by throw_pm23 »

abeppu wrote: post #25

I think we should push for the other direction: let's get the unnecessary administrators out of universities. In particular, let's make schools show that greater than k% of their budget goes to actual instruction in order to be eligible to receive federal student loan dollars (and the threshold should rise over time). It's still really silly to me that schools push towards having a lot of instruction (their core prod…

Your analysis leaves out the third big activity at universities: research. The core product of most schools (the top ones at least) is not instruction but papers and grant proposals. You are right on administrators though.

Re: Could science leave the university?

#28

Post by spfzero »

lacy_tinpot wrote: post #14
spfzero wrote: post #3

One thing that might be a problem here, is the ongoing oversupply of advanced degrees. This creates a ready supply of replacement faculty whenever needed. As science faculty leave the university, the university has the option of easily replacing them one-by-one, probably at lower cost, and are left with no need to hire the new scientists' organization. The research quality might drop, but the university's reputation…

There can't be an oversupply of advanced degrees. Rather if there is an "oversupply" it means that we can't adequately absorb the intellectual capacity of the population. This in itself is a problem that needs to be addressed.

> we can't adequately absorb the intellectual capacity of the population

Think that's been true for a long time, yank any early 20th-century factory worker out of their job, you'll find a human intellect not being fully utilized. In fact just use a contemporary worker and the same thing is true. We can't all be getting grants to study something, society has to create some extra wealth first.

Re: Could science leave the university?

#29

Post by UberFly »

unclesaamm wrote: post #24

This is conservative lobbying spam. The umbrella group producing this document is called the "National Academy of Scholars" (NAS), which publishes articles about "globalists" and is funded by conservative donors (see https://www.nas.org/storage/app/media/New%20Documents/annual... ). Annoyingly, the National Academy of Scholars was named in a way that collides in the namespace with the (actually reputable) National Ac…

You may not like who funded the article, but it still makes valid points about the limitations of science research being so heavily connected to the mouse-maze that is college academics.

Re: Could science leave the university?

#30

Post by taylodl »

UberFly wrote: post #29
unclesaamm wrote: post #24

This is conservative lobbying spam. The umbrella group producing this document is called the "National Academy of Scholars" (NAS), which publishes articles about "globalists" and is funded by conservative donors (see https://www.nas.org/storage/app/media/New%20Documents/annual... ). Annoyingly, the National Academy of Scholars was named in a way that collides in the namespace with the (actually reputable) National Ac…

You may not like who funded the article, but it still makes valid points about the limitations of science research being so heavily connected to the mouse-maze that is college academics.

As opposed to the mouse-maze that is corporate finance?

BTW, private companies have also been doing science for decades. Ever hear of Bell Labs? Xerox PARC? Battelle Labs? SpaceX? Tesla?

What we've learned is what kinds of research is best conducted by what kind of entity - commercial or private. We don't need the fallacy of this false dichotomy.

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