211–220 of 756 posts
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there are tons of alternative ways to get education , or do research
Education yes, research unfortunately no. I'm not saying research outside of academia is not possible, I'm just saying it's not taken seriously and this needs to change. We really do need to go back to the 19th century model of the researcher gentleman.
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…
Can you give some context the grad student union and how it intends to fight the explotatiove nature of the academia?
MIT Current Graduate Student are 41% international. https://facts.mit.edu/enrollment-statistics/
In my very average undergrad university, the EE department had 2 American PhD students, and something like 6-10 international students.
This system needs a reset. It could (after a likely painful disruption) refocus on teaching, keeping current (exorbitant) prices but providing a better education. Or it could focus on costs (cutting off unnecessary expenses). Or do something else, but the current setup is not sustainable.
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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…
Government is not great at picking up or creating ideas. Academia has to lead in that and then show government why it would be best for the nation to fund those. The government is good at long term funding for ideas that may not be the best for private sector right away but it should not be creating ideas themselves otherwise you would get things like Lysenkoism.
Academia is about to go through a generational reset. The system is broken and the market only tolerates broken systems for so long. There are a ton of great things that come out of universities but it’s also clear that a model of charging folks well into the six-figures for a useless degree that doesn’t prepare them for the workforce is dead and a reckoning is underway. Many schools will fail and shut down. Of those…
You speak of "market" and "cost-value" and economic darwinism. You seem to be confused: many things do not work based on next-quarter revenue optimisation, fundamental science research being one of them.
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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?
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…
I was disillusioned with academia before I started. We had a candid talk during undergrad with a grad student who was a TA in our class and he laid it out for us: there wouldn't be enough jobs in the US for our small graduating class each year so if you needed a job to support yourself it would not make financial sense. I stopped then and there, maybe one or two classmates continued. That was almost 20 years ago. I'm…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
there are tons of alternative ways to get education , or do research
Education yes, research unfortunately no. I'm not saying research outside of academia is not possible, I'm just saying it's not taken seriously and this needs to change. We really do need to go back to the 19th century model of the researcher gentleman.
I follow a dozen YouTubers doing extremely niche, cutting edge, science.
It is progressing beyond 'backyard science'.