281–290 of 756 posts
And this is only the beginning. I wonder what a good white-collar career path will be post-AI? What is your opinion on this?
> heavy new 8% tax on our endowment returns Cry me a river.
I'm a graduate myself but where I am right now is really different from where I expected it to be
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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…
These places aren't homogeneous in their political tastes.
I live in a northeast blue state, but there are rural pockets that are still heavily MAGA. And I'm sure Mississippi has liberal enclaves.
That being said, I don't know what the "solution" to this problem is.
It's ok. The top colleges are arguably now in China. China is providing free education in many poor African countries. Chinese is one of many subjects offered. Of course, a smart African college student will have no issue learning English, Chinese, as well her home countries language. The future belongs to China. We're elevating fine institutions such as Liberty University and celebrating comedians and edge lords. Ch…
>The top colleges are arguably now in China. Argued by who? Source? >We're elevating fine institutions... Who? Maybe you mean Europe? After all, why aren't all those brilliant African students studying German or Italian? I assume you also mean that Europe has terrible universities and has completely ceded the future to glorious China?
Harvard is slipping and with the Republican war on education our top universities will continue to fall behind.
This is 100% self imposed of course.
>The list of canceled institutions includes Ivy League schools Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Brown and Princeton as well as other top universities like MIT, Carnegie Mellon and Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.
>That comes after the Pentagon chief said earlier this month that he would cancel professional military education, fellowships, and certificate programs with Harvard.
>In his memo, Hegseth also included a list of potential new partners schools: Liberty University, George Mason University, Pepperdine, University ofTennessee, University of Michigan, University of Nebraska, University of North Carolina, Clemson, and Baylor, among others.
https://fortune.com/2026/02/28/pentagon-officer-education-iv...
I'm not making any of this up.
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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 get…
You're responding to someone who's explaining to you that this is exactly the problem.
If an extremist can do whatever they want if they happen to excite people with a "platform that broadly appeals to enough Americans", then the problem is structural, and has to be addressed there, or literally everything you do and have can be undone by the next moron that riles people up again.
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?
However there have been a couple of long term trends: Switch to gig economy for college teaching, and loss of manufacturing industry. My first job out of grad school was in a factory.
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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…
Yes similar, some time back I was in a grad program that I was really interested in and decent at, but by then married and child on the way. My Master's adviser was honest that it's better to just work somewhere vs go down PhD path as I was doing this for the job prospects. The folks who stayed with this were "family-funded" and well to do in their home countries. They basically were doing it for various reasons asid…
academia gets destroyed
I just hope there is an attempt to recover from this after 2029 and not just a shrug
other countries have not stopped their 10-20+ year plans for education research
otherwise in a decade the USA is just going to be known as the country that makes the deadliest weapons to sell to the world and little else