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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

#331

Post by krapp »

ck2 wrote: post #290

when an entity as powerful as the federal government sets an agenda to purposely destroy academia 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 litt…

>I just hope there is an attempt to recover from this after 2029 and not just a shrug

Unfortunately this isn't something we can just vote our way out of. The people who support the destruction of America's science and research infrastructure will still be there, and will still be voting. Trumpism will survive Trump as more competent fascists take power. Rebuilding the knowledge base, infrastructure and trust destroyed will take years, with half the country steadfastly working against any attempt to reverse course.

I don't think it's impossible, but I do think it's going to require massive cultural changes and a complete redesign and decoupling of the federal system. Not secession - I think that would be a disaster - but a repeal of the Constitution's Compact Clause allowing states to enter into agreements with foreign governments without Congressional approval. Let the MAGA states retreat into their own Christian nationalist Juche hellhole while everyone else remains a part of the modern global community. It would be a win-win for everyone.

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

#332

Post by JoeNuts »

ryandrake wrote: post #127
mcmcmc wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have $27 billion in their endowment. They are choosing not to fund those positions when they easily could on their own.

At this point, these well-endowed universities are essentially Private Equity firms, each with a university hanging off the side as a minor, semi-profitable department within the firm.

Universities get ~40-50% of their funding from the government. Private equity doesn't quite fit.

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

#333

Post by tamimio »

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…

The squeeze is not worth the juice. The pay is bad, the sector is heavily regulated that you could lose your job for a post you made online, dealing with student is pain (I have been there), expensive tuition, the titles are saturated too, the other day I saw a 24yo a “phd student”, plus the AI making education less valuable in general, at least from average person view. All that plus other factors just make it useless to waste time in anything beyond bachelor, even in engineering, a master degree is usually substituted by few years experience.

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

#334

Post by loeg »

ceejayoz wrote: post #148
loeg wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one voted to "overthrow" democracy and do "fascism," cut the hyperbole.

Stop freaking out at thought experiments. I'm asking what should happen in such a scenario. Should a democratic society be able to vote to nuke their least favorite city? Should they be able to vote for slavery? Should they be able to vote to legalize raping kids? What should a democratic populace not be able to inflict upon the less powerful segments of society?

To clarify, you agree that the Trump admin / MAGA political movement isn't fascism and his election wasn't an overthrow of democracy? Your earlier remarks were just a thought experiment? That isn't really the sense I've gotten from your historical comments.

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

#335

Post by jasonhong »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #318
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…

I used to work with a brilliant and humble guy. He got accepted to MIT at 14, but his parents made him go to community college for a year to give him a little more time to mature. He then went to MIT and graduated after three years, then went to Berkeley and got a masters in one year, then went to Stanford and it took six years to get his PhD? Why? Because his advisor milked him for his work. She had a pile of papers…

Speaking as someone who has graduated over a dozen PhD students in computer science...

Yes, it is possible to complete a PhD in 3-4 years, but it's not really good for your career. The bar our department sets for a PhD is that at the end of it, you should be a world expert in your specific topic.

A PhD is more like an apprenticeship, where you develop and refine your skills, your background knowledge in your area of specialization, your ability to write and do presentations, and your taste in research problems. These are all things take a lot of time to mature.

The problem with graduating fast is that (a) you wouldn't be able to do internships, (b) you would severely limit your ability to grow your social network (via workshops, conferences, internships, department service, etc), (c) you would limit your ability to deepen and broaden your portfolio of research, and (d) you limit the time your ideas have to percolate out into the rest of the research community and industry.

While I can't speak directly about your friend's experiences, learning how to do peer review and learning how to write first drafts are really important skills that can indirectly help with coming up and executing on a dissertation idea.

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

#336

Post by nomdep »

elashri wrote: post #33

It is mainly because of federal funding cuts that departments accept fewer students as written in the actual text. But I might add that the changes of immigration and the changes in foreign policy might played a rule. There are no mention of AI at all.

I don't think MIT has money problems

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

#337

Post by efavdb »

spyckie2 wrote: post #245

Any other institutions outside of academia that has a 20+ billion endowment that earns 4 billion a year? And 500 grad students at what 50k per year for funding is what 25 million? They really couldn’t hedge the risk with their own money if talent was truly that important?

Agree, and I think it's probably healthy that the large endowments are being taxed a modest amount.

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

#338

Post by d00mScroll »

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.

[dead]

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

#339

Post by jll29 »

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…

E pluribus duam?

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

#340

Post by JumpCrisscross »

slg wrote: post #240
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grad students outnumber coalminers 70:1, if they're roughly half international which another comment claims, that's still a big difference.

The way "coal miners" are discussed would also likely be something that puzzles historians. There are approximately 45,000 coal miners in the US, that's roughly equivalent to the combined enrollment of Harvard and MIT. There are more university students in the relatively small city of Cambridge, Massachusetts than there are people mining coal in the US and yet we have to pretend the latter are a constituency worth co…

> yet we have to pretend the latter are a constituency worth considering

The Clines, Justices and even Manchins have money. The miners are almost irrelevant.

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