Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

2025 Hiring Pause

hr.cornell.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 173 posts

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#51

Post by MinimalAction »

Other institutions are also following the lead: MIT [0], Stanford [1], North Carolina State [2], UCSD [3], and perhaps there will be many others.

[0]: https://hr.mit.edu/jobs

[1]: https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2025/02/staff-hiring

[2]: https://www.wral.com/news/education/nc-state-hiring-freeze-f...

[3]: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/02/20/uc-san-diego...

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#52

Post by nis0s »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #38
machinekob wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contemporary academia especially in the West has a massive surplus of staff. Many people pursue academic careers solely for a comfortable lifestyle, doing minimal or even no research for long period of time. With extra lack of oversight that allows researchers to isolate themselves they create circles which cover each other. Occasionally, folks outside of the circle come in and they start finding ton of fraud in the…

What fraud happened at Harvard?

If you search “Harvard research fraud” at least three distinct cases come up.

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#53

Post by johnnyanmac »

tdeck wrote: post #46
johnnyanmac wrote: post #36

Not going to lie, I felt the 2025 market would get worse but never thought to have "(potential) mass government layoff" on my bingo card. What are unemployed people even finding these days? Is everyone just giving in to the gig economy? Sadly my car is definitely on its last legs (probably saved by the pandemic) so I don't know how long it'd last if I did Doordash/Uber ------ On topic, it's a shame even an Ivy League…

> I felt the 2025 market would get worse but never thought to have "(potential) mass government layoff" on my bingo card. I'm curious if this is because you never heard about what was in Project 2025, or didn't think Trump would win, or didn't think he would enact it?

I learned from 2016 and didn't discount the idea of Trump winning again. I just didn't think he'd enact it. He'd be blocked by properly smart people who realize across the board that "this will impact my money".

And to be fair some smart people (in the courts) are blocking it. I just didn't think so many illegal actions in the course of a month would escalate this far without. It makes Nixon look like the Dali Lhama.

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#54

Post by fny »

loganriebel wrote: post #6

Cornell has an endowment of 10.7 billion dollars. https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2024/10/university-endowmen...

You don’t spent an endowment, you spend the interest. The entire research budget comes from outside funding. In Cornell’s case, the research funding amounts to $1B a year.

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#55

Post by elif »

testfoobar wrote: post #9

Here is a 2024 article from the Stanford Daily: https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/13/behind-stanfords-double... In 1996: 13,811 students, 1488 faculty, 5881 total staff. In 2024: 17,529 students, 2323 faculty, 16,527 total staff. In 28 years: 27% increase in students 56% increase in faculty 281% increase in total staff The ratio of staff to students is nearly 1:1 This is insane.

virtually every sector of the economy has 'excess staff;' it is not confined to higher ed. It's the obvious conclusion of decades of automation not being realized as less working hours, but in the dilution of responsibilities into more complicated and larger corporate apparatuses. Some of them are called "bullshit jobs" some of them are given credibility, while being utterly purposeless ultimately. This is largely ignored as a general trend because it is usually contextualized to a narrative within each company (as is the case here) rather than seen as a larger phenomenon.

This is the inevitable conclusion of unprecedented concentration of capital, which is not new but only being revealed during a time of seemingly limitless automation potential.

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#56

Post by giantg2 »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #36

Not going to lie, I felt the 2025 market would get worse but never thought to have "(potential) mass government layoff" on my bingo card. What are unemployed people even finding these days? Is everyone just giving in to the gig economy? Sadly my car is definitely on its last legs (probably saved by the pandemic) so I don't know how long it'd last if I did Doordash/Uber ------ On topic, it's a shame even an Ivy League…

It's all about the choices. Post secondary schools had easy money (student loans, grants, expanding endowments) and rapidly expanding enrollment for decades. It seems many schools thought that would continue, but we saw enrollment plateau and even decrease. Ivy schools have options - lower prestige to increase enrollment, or lean on prestige and endowments to raise prices. Other schools will likely cut staff/services and increase class sizes. I went to a state school and their enrollment has dropped 25% since I was there. It seems tuition went up, state funding per student is higher (not sure if total is the same or higher), some upgrades were put off, and some services seem to have been scaled back.

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#57

Post by f6v »

EternalFury wrote: post #7

If anything in any country should be free, it should be education. And, obviously, the administration of education should never be a for-profit venture. Valuing democracy and being able to select sensible leaders depends on it.

It’s never free. People in Europe say it is when they want to take a jab at the USA. But the reality is that earning potential is severely limited in Europe. And let’s not pretend that every degree obtained is beneficial to society. People get degrees with no marketable skills all the time. And the losses are distributed among all the taxpayers.

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#58

Post by apples_oranges »

userbinator wrote: post #42
EternalFury wrote: post #7

If anything in any country should be free, it should be education. And, obviously, the administration of education should never be a for-profit venture. Valuing democracy and being able to select sensible leaders depends on it.

If anything in any country should be free, it should be education. It's called The Internet.

there's perhaps something to be said for this argument: if you paid a lot of money for something you might be more motivated to use it wisely.

Also I can now get on the Internet and research jet engines or kidney transplants, but unless someone makes me learn the whole curriculum around it and then tests me to check if I understand, it's not worth much.

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#59

Post by almosthere »

testfoobar wrote: post #9

Here is a 2024 article from the Stanford Daily: https://stanforddaily.com/2024/03/13/behind-stanfords-double... In 1996: 13,811 students, 1488 faculty, 5881 total staff. In 2024: 17,529 students, 2323 faculty, 16,527 total staff. In 28 years: 27% increase in students 56% increase in faculty 281% increase in total staff The ratio of staff to students is nearly 1:1 This is insane.

The other insane thing is 10 students to one teacher? I don't understand that because when I went to SJSU, I was almost always in a class with 60+. For CS, it was around 30 people in the room.

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#60

Post by bobthepanda »

nxm wrote: post #11
DrBenCarson wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminder that endowments are highly illiquid and typically are not used to fund budgets

What should they be used for the ?

Universities use the interest and dividends to pay for operating expenses.

Actually drawing down the fund would just ruin future finances.

Post reply on HN