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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

#411

Post by buellerbueller »

intrasight wrote: post #364
divbzero wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I’m aware of? Most PhD grads not staying academia seems to be a long-running phenomenon. The number of permanent academic positions simply does not match up against the number of PhD grads.

Some disciplines are much better at managing the PhD admissions to match the job opportunities. Philosophy for example. But I don't think that's done with most science PhDs. Is that because of a culture of exploiting cheap labor?

Or perhaps because of the vast appetite for the benefits that accrue from scientific research, without wanting to truly fund science and education.

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

#412

Post by pesus »

retsibsi wrote: post #322
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, people act like everything was peachy until Trump decided to run, and then people went crazy and voted for him for some unknowable reason. No, things were pretty fucked before Trump. We had decades of our "leaders" in Washington treating the people with contempt and making decisions for personal benefit, rather than what benefits the people. We had bribery, I mean lobbying, behind a ton of the laws that got pas…

> but nobody should be surprised when people vote for an outsider who says "I'm for you, and I'm going to help you take back your country from the out of touch elites who hate you and only look out for themselves" Sort of, but that was always a pretty obvious tack to take, and I don't think there was ever a shortage of would-be leaders willing to play that role. So we're still left with the question of why the voters…

I think there is a shortage of would-be leaders like that though, that's the problem. Or at least would be leaders that gained any real traction. The only other one in the past decade was Bernie.

Unfortunately for the past 3 elections, it essentially came down to the obviously untrustworthy "outsider" vs the ultimate establishment candidate. For a lot of people, it's as simple as that.

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

#413

Post by noosphr »

exegete wrote: post #385
buran77 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I think this was always the case. The disillusionment isn't new and not all who are disillusioned will act on it. The rest just put their PhD where the money is, as always.

The trend is somewhat new if we look long term. The gap between PhD’s and number of openings in academia has gotten a lot worse.

Between 2010 to 2015 my top 20 ranked university had 1 permanent job per 50 graduated PhDs in physics and maybe 1 in 30 for mathematics.

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

#414

Post by at-fates-hands »

arenaninja wrote: post #188
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 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…

Was also in a similar position around the same time. When I was an undergrad, my two professors told me to stay out of academia it wasn't worth it. I plowed ahead anyways. I had the same conversations with grad students I really admired I think finally got through to me. This was between graduation and starting grad school in the Fall.

The general message was academia isn't a romantic pursuit. If you love doing research and writing, work in a more technical field where the pay is much better, the hours are more stable and you're not fighting an uphill battle against the system and the people who want to take away tenure (which was a big flashpoint in academia when I was there) and with whom you will always be in competition for grants and research funding.

Thankfully, I never went back. The summer before I was supposed to start, the enthusiasm for grad school just turned off like a light switch. I just had no interest in pursuing a masters in my program. I pivoted instead and ended up in a totally different field. I later found out only one person in our class of 15 went on to grad school. Kind of crazy.

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

#415

Post by selimthegrim »

coryrc wrote: post #160
epolanski wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jm2c, but I really don't believe the "top educators" argument. People keep mixing correlation with causation. The reason why ivy league universities have generally stronger students is related to input: acceptance rates are lower and the weaker candidates are pre filtered. Public universities around the world, obviously get a much wider variance in the student pool. But that's about it. There is strong evidence that…

Learning calculus is table stakes. While you're almost certainly wrong about "not learning calculus or chemistry better at MIT than in an unknown university", learning happens outside the classroom just as much as within it. Students at random Italian University don't have a connection to people doing the most advanced research in the world. At MIT, that person is there and the people they are mentoring. You can work…

That's really interesting, so why is Caltech losing student cross-admits to MIT and the Ivies/Stanford?

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

#416

Post by fortran77 »

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 saw those videos of horrible people at MIT disrupting classes last year, with the school doing nothing. I'd rather spend the first two years cheaply at a local community college and then finish my undergrad degree at a nice State school than suffer through all that.

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

#417

Post by bragr »

jasonhong wrote: post #335
tasty_freeze wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>but it's not really good for your career

Can you define that with more specificity? I find that academics have a major blind spot where good career means "the path I took" to the exclusion of all other paths.

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

And your CV says another 6 dropped out. What was good for their careers?

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

#418

Post by noosphr »

999900000999 wrote: post #223

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 future belongs to China.

China's population pyramid is worse than the USAs. The present belongs to China. This is as good as it gets.

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

#420

Post by erelong »

iaw wrote: post #407
erelong wrote: post #399

Education and many industries have been destroyed via regulation, effectively snuffing out competition which could make them produce better quality and quantity of outputs

Can you back that up with.... you know... evidence? "regulation bad" tends to be a political talking point more than a valid argument when you're this vague. Edited: to add, this speech talks a lot about the reduction in research funding from the US government which arguably has nothing to do with the regulatory environment.

You should be able to open up shop as a doctor or lawyer or engineer without any degree (!) in a free market, or spin up a school if you want

We are so very far from any of that, that people think it's merely funding or AI or immigration causing this current issue (maybe immediately but not on the long term trend if you see older articles on a "college bubble" maybe a decade ago), where it is decades of over-regulation of these industries preventing any competitive alternative to them

So you get less and less quality options that cost more

Evidence of this would be in contrast, something like computer hardware that keeps improving and getting cheaper, relatively speaking

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