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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

#471

Post by setopt »

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…

All of the things you mention can also be done as a PostDoc. Which might be even better for social networking, broadening your research portfolio, etc. than staying in a single PhD position for the duration of a PhD + PostDoc.

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

#472

Post by voncheese »

gowld wrote: post #458
quantgenius wrote: post #440

I don't know the situation at MIT in particular but overall creating some budgetary pressures for universities is probably a good thing. Every since it became near impossible to discharge student debt due to legislation in the Bush presidency that was designed to make student loans more easily available, the money spigot has been opened far too wide and this is largely funded by debt taken on by 18 year olds who aren…

The article is about graduate school, not undergrad. You can tell from the title.

Unless I'm missing something, the linked article from MIT is about more than graduate students. That article talks about how changes introduced in 2025 are causing taxation on budgets that (as far as I can tell) affect all students.

The prior poster is making the case that might not be a bad thing, but its not just graduate students

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

#473

Post by CryptoBanker »

quantgenius wrote: post #440

I don't know the situation at MIT in particular but overall creating some budgetary pressures for universities is probably a good thing. Every since it became near impossible to discharge student debt due to legislation in the Bush presidency that was designed to make student loans more easily available, the money spigot has been opened far too wide and this is largely funded by debt taken on by 18 year olds who aren…

Please use some line breaks. I find this extremely difficult to read

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

#474

Post by groundzeros2015 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #53
groundzeros2015 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t the brain drain people leaving their home countries to make money in the US?

> people leaving their home countries to make money in the US? To study and work, yes. We learned the trick when the Nazis chased off their scientists, doubled down on it by capturing Nazi scientists, and then developed it into a multi-decade advantage throughout the Cold War and the 1990s. Looking back, we started fucking it up with the Iraq War and financial crisis (see: A123 bankruptcy giving China its EV industry…

Those were productive researchers already working in the field who simply moved their address.

Whether to educate young Chinese nationals in the US who plan to return to their home nation isn’t a similar situation.

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

#475

Post by scuppernong »

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…

MIT is not close to one of the first universities with a grad student union, the UC has been unionized since the 90s.

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

#476

Post by groundzeros2015 »

1-more wrote: post #145
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people leaving their home countries to make money in the US? To study and work, yes. We learned the trick when the Nazis chased off their scientists, doubled down on it by capturing Nazi scientists, and then developed it into a multi-decade advantage throughout the Cold War and the 1990s. Looking back, we started fucking it up with the Iraq War and financial crisis (see: A123 bankruptcy giving China its EV industry…

Highly recommend The Man from the Future biography of John von Neumann. We got The Martians for a steal because Europe was too hostile to minorities and we got the Manhattan Project and computers out of the deal. Never gonna have a brain drain arbitrage opportunity like that again.

That’s not remotely similar.

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

#478

Post by EvgeniyZh »

BeetleB wrote: post #445
jasonhong wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A very US-centric perspective. Whereas the folks in Europe do it in 3-4 years, come to the US and do a 2-3 year postdoc (with higher pay than a PhD student), and are ahead of their American peers. Also, depending on where you do it in Europe, the pay as a PhD student is higher. At the extreme end, I knew students getting paid $60K/year in one country, while I was getting $24K/year in the US.

With 2 years master's before for the same total?

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

#479

Post by c7b »

loeg wrote: post #295
counters wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A sizable chunk of the endowment likely has legal restrictions that limit how funds can be spent. E.g., they could be earmarked for undergraduate scholarships or a specific lab at a specific department. The endowment isn't a slush fund. It's also worth noting that the structural costs of research are far larger than what any single institution would be able to shoulder. For instance, MIT has extremely limited superco…

> A sizable chunk of the endowment likely has legal restrictions that limit how funds can be spent. E.g., they could be earmarked for undergraduate scholarships or a specific lab at a specific department. The endowment isn't a slush fund. Some of it has some restrictions, but money is fungible. I do not believe that MIT is actually limited (in practice ) from writing their own grants because of donor restrictions (if…

The vast majority of the endowment isn't money (dollars in bank accounts). University endowments work like private equity funds, most of the funds will be invested in assets, most of which hardly liquid enough to reasonably convert them into cash on short notice. They could try to borrow money against the valuations of those assets, but it's not sane to take on debt in order to sustain a level of expenditures that was adjusted to a much higher level of income (true more generally). Especially when the alternative of temporarily scaling back expenses is relatively easy.

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

#480

Post by kakacik »

quantgenius wrote: post #440

I don't know the situation at MIT in particular but overall creating some budgetary pressures for universities is probably a good thing. Every since it became near impossible to discharge student debt due to legislation in the Bush presidency that was designed to make student loans more easily available, the money spigot has been opened far too wide and this is largely funded by debt taken on by 18 year olds who aren…

Investing in educated population in future is investment in given society itself. Triple that for US where most folks remain in adulthood, so brain drain aint an issue. State/society would get those money 10x back easily.

But then who could push through some redneck agenda that is actively harmful to future of given society, but with apropriate emotional charge to ruffle feathers and get people into voting against themselves. You need simple people that can easily believe the dumbest shit you can cone up with. Smart educated folks usually know better, definitely on average.

I dont claim there is some big conspiracy around this, that would be too convenient copout when human greed and stupidity is enough, but it would make a typical Bond villain chess move.

Really, there is no good excuse for public education to not be accessible to whole public. Unless you want class based society, which US in many regards is and will be for foreseeable future.

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