A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline • Hacker News Board

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

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Post by cvwright » Thu, May 14, 2026, 7:18 PM UTC

nomadygnt wrote: post #366

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…

Taking a longer time to graduate to become the “world expert” in their field is fine if grad students weren’t paid next to nothing for the 60+ hours a week that they are expected to work. As it is now it’s better to finish as quickly as possible so they can have a real life.

I worked a ton in grad school, and it definitely sucked at the time.

But it’s crazy to complain about getting paid to go to school. A grad stipend is there to minimally support you so you don’t have to get another job and can focus on your research. It’s not supposed to be a career!

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

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Post by loeg » Thu, May 14, 2026, 7:18 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #353

loeg wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> No one voted to "overthrow" democracy and do "fascism," Most Trump voters didn't. A sizeable fraction have openly agitated for, and supported, violently overthrowing our elected government.

It's mostly inaccurate to characterize large groups by their minority fringe members. (I don't like Trump, MAGA, or January 6ers either, FWIW. But it's important to speak about this stuff truthfully.)

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

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Post by ModernMech » Thu, May 14, 2026, 7:19 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #481

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…

It may be good but also can be very problematic. Organizations don't really shrink well. When times are good, they hire a lot of people that are marginally necessary. Over the good times, these roles become well-integrated into how the organization does business; whether or not they were necessary at first, people start depending on that person for a task, their approvals become part of a critical workflow, they deve…

I'll give a real example.

In my department we have research staff to look at research proposals and make sure they're good before they're submitted to the grant agency.

Someone might look at the budget and say "This is administrative bloat because it is not teaching focused so we are cutting them."

What's the downstream effect? Well now those professors who relied on the research staff have to take time out of their schedules to do deeper reviews of their work, so they reduce teaching time and increase research time.

They are not as skilled as the dedicated staff, so now there are fewer proposals being accepted. This means less money to the university, and particularly the department.

So what does the department do? They stop hiring undergraduate graders and they institute a hiring freeze. Now that means they cannot admit as many students, teaching costs go up, class sizes go up. And for the admitted students, now they've lost their work study, so it means fewer students are going to enroll because their aid has decreased, effectively increasing tuition. This can be a vicious downward spiral if not checked.

So the original intent of "tighten belts and reduce waste" is really "we made everything worse for everyone"

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

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Post by cvwright » Thu, May 14, 2026, 7:20 PM UTC

nomadygnt wrote: post #496

smith7018 wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most applicants know that that outcome is antithetical to pursuing a PhD. It's common knowledge that a PhD involves 5-7 years of academic work (read: low pay) in pursuit of becoming an expert in a specialized topic. You don't enter a PhD program expecting to immediately make money or to graduate as soon as possible. It's not a coding bootcamp.

I agree with you. It is definitely what the PhD student signed up for. But like I said in a sibling reply I think if we are worried about having fewer grad students (not saying that we should be), then we may need to change the incentive structure surrounding the PhD programs to make it more worthwhile for people to invest the time and energy. Because how it is currently going it seems to me like fewer and fewer peop…

re: incentives, my proposal was always to let schools pay their football and basketball players, but require that grad research assistants are paid the same.

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

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Post by loeg » Thu, May 14, 2026, 7:20 PM UTC

c7b wrote: post #479

loeg wrote: post #295

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. 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 wa…

I am very skeptical that endowment funds are as illiquid as you claim. We're talking about amounts less than 10% of the total portfolio size annually.

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

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Post by lovich » Thu, May 14, 2026, 7:21 PM UTC

dekhn wrote: post #443

drapado wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are those PhDs being paid with a decent salary? If not, I can’t agree with your statement. PS. I did my PhD in an EU country where it’s treated as another researcher job with salary and benefits

PhD candidates in the US usually get somewhere between $25K and $50K stipend, also some level of benefits (typically health care). Sometimes there is a tuition waiver (student does not need to pay grad program tuition). In my case I was making $32K/year with a tuition waiver and health benefits around ~2000, in SF, which was barely enough to rent a shared apartment and eat food. The only way I could rationalize it is…

Wait, some PhD candidates are being paid near minimum wage and are still paying their university to do work for their university?

That just sounds like indentured servitude with extra steps.

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

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Post by knappe » Thu, May 14, 2026, 7:21 PM UTC

dekhn wrote: post #443

drapado wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are those PhDs being paid with a decent salary? If not, I can’t agree with your statement. PS. I did my PhD in an EU country where it’s treated as another researcher job with salary and benefits

PhD candidates in the US usually get somewhere between $25K and $50K stipend, also some level of benefits (typically health care). Sometimes there is a tuition waiver (student does not need to pay grad program tuition). In my case I was making $32K/year with a tuition waiver and health benefits around ~2000, in SF, which was barely enough to rent a shared apartment and eat food. The only way I could rationalize it is…

Yeah, I distinctionly remember a postdoc I knew who was irrationally excited to move to a role where they were going to get paid $35k, in 2010s money, and they were damn excited about it. And they were moving to a high cost of living area (from a high cost of living area). I was utterly flabbergasted because they were very smart, very technical and should have been earning 5-10x that. I feel like they didn't know what they were worth and academia had utterly failed to teach them that.

I don't know how they paid any of their accumulated (I assume) student debt, let alone had an even decent standard of living.

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

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Post by cvwright » Thu, May 14, 2026, 7:22 PM UTC

caminante wrote: post #426

bragr wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

He appears to be tunnel-visioning on academia. The vast majority (>75%) of Computer Science PhDs leave academia. [0] Becoming a "world expert in a specific topic" is overfitting skills for a sub-niche of a specific career. There certainly aren't enough jobs in academia. [0] https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/213640/what-rat...

You’re arguing that we have too many PhD students in CS, not too few.

I agree with you fwiw.

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

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Post by gekoxyz » Thu, May 14, 2026, 7:23 PM UTC

ifethereal wrote: post #509

macleginn wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There may be issues with the implementation, but masters only programmes are absolutely commonplace in Europe. Some are better, some are worse, but good ones are genuinely helpful for people to, e.g., upskill before going into industry or decide whether they want to do a PhD.

Master's programs in Europe are commonly the pathway/requirement to applying for a PhD position. This supports why they might be commonplace there, but it also means the same reason would not justify the master's only programs in the US in the same way.

Yeah but as a European I think we took the wrong route. I am from Italy, and until 2001 we had 5 years undergraduate programs only. We then chose to do 3 + 2, but we should have gone with 4 + 1 years instead.

I have a BSc in Computer Engineering and I'm finishing a MSc in Computer Science. The MSc has been useless other than for being able to start doing research. I could have learned additional things in 1 more year, without repeating most of the knowledge in the other year, and then start the PhD directly. Instead I did a MSc where for 1 year I mostly repeated old topics before starting working on really new things.

I think Masters should be highly specialized for people that after a Bachelor start to work but want additional knowledge for their position.

TLDR: 4 years Bachelors -> 4 years PhD is the correct route in my opinion. We messed up in Europe

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

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Post by lowbloodsugar » Thu, May 14, 2026, 7:23 PM UTC

EvgeniyZh wrote: post #478

BeetleB wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

A US thing again? My friends all did 3 year bachelors, 3 year PhD. Some dragged out the PhD to 4. Those who do a masters do it in one year, and typically don't do a PhD. Some undergrad courses are 4 year and you get a masters at the end. And my UK bachelors was recognized as equivalent to a US masters degree for visa purposes.