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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

#541

Post by ckemere »

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…

Further counter argument- It seems that (elite) undergraduate students care about their professors research (versus just teaching). Else Harvey Mudd would be much much harder to get into compared with MIT?

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

#542

Post by dpe82 »

ModernMech wrote: post #533
nostrademons wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thinking about it as a system:

If every university were subject to similar constraints, the average "quality" of research proposals would go down (everybody would have less time to spend on it) but since the pool of research dollars is assumed constant everyone would still get roughly their same slice - just with less overhead.

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

#543

Post by ClarityJones »

strix_varius wrote: post #493
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…

Most of what you've said is true, but also largely unrelated to the content of the article, which is about funding research.

It's relevant in that the article mentions "research" 13 times, but "education" only 3 times.

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

#544

Post by lovich »

andix wrote: post #436
amarilio wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes towards MIT’s endowment, which is valued at over $27B, and grew $3B last year. There is no shortage of money.

> There is no shortage of money This is a general theme in the last decade. There is a lot of money, but it is more and more ending up in the pockets of the extremely wealthy. I'm really no communist, but we've reached a point where the system starts to crumble because of it. It also can't be in the interest of the billionaires. They also want to live in a safe country and use working public infrastructure (roads, ai…

You’ve got some copium in there. Why wouldn’t billionaires want a few famous professors they can buy to teach their children the same way Alexander the Great was taught by Aristotle.

You don’t have to share the education time for your kids with the poor and think of how exclusive and how much status is advertises.

As for everything else you said about it not being in the interest of the billionaires. Even if you are 100% correct they have enough money to pay someone else to deal with any frictions in life and not think about it.

On top of that, if you look at their behavior, there’s a lot of similarities between the wealthiest in society and how they treat money, and how addicts treat heroin. Addicts frequently engage in self destructive behavior for the next hit.

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

#545

Post by ModernMech »

dpe82 wrote: post #542
ModernMech wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thinking about it as a system: If every university were subject to similar constraints, the average "quality" of research proposals would go down (everybody would have less time to spend on it) but since the pool of research dollars is assumed constant everyone would still get roughly their same slice - just with less overhead.

How it would actually work is only the best schools would keep their funding while lower tier schools would be shut out entirely and be forced to severely reduce their research agendas. There's a school near me that just went from College to University status because they grew their graduate program enough, they would probably not weather the storm the same as MIT.

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

#546

Post by registeredcorn »

Levitz wrote: post #432
Arodex wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Confederates' common folks tried to burn the USA to the ground to save their inalienable right to own slaves. Who will listen to the "perception and needs" of the racist, misogynistic common folks who want to impose their religious liberty (by banning abortion) and and elevate their financial situation (by pushing downward brown and black people)? (The GOP, that's who.) And don't you tell me it's a minority, when…

Calling out the GOP for imposing racism, sexism and ideology in a thread about US universities is certainly a choice.

I was puzzled if I was the only one wondering what in the world any of this had to do with MIT enrollment rates. Haha.

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

#547

Post by lowbloodsugar »

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…

there are two types of people in post-grad academia. those who are interested in advancing knowledge, and those who are interested in advancing their career. i've worked with many phds who were completely useless - they understood how to work for a career minded advisor because they were career minded themselves. those were their skills: doing what they were told, kowtowing, reading other people's work and talking about it as if they understand it. generating and iterating ideas at the pace required for business? non-existent to the point of appearing mentally incompetent. i'd go so far as to say that the office politics involved in academia is antithetical to knowledge creation. i've also worked with phds who were absolute creating geniuses, but I've worked with even more who didn't do a phd or who quit their phd to focus on commericalizing an idea.

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

#548

Post by ceejayoz »

loeg wrote: post #532
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.)

> It's mostly inaccurate to characterize large groups by their minority fringe members.

Less so when they elect/appoint them to national-level leadership.

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

#549

Post by [deleted] »

xhevahir wrote: post #524
garciasn wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t this sort of how all terminal degrees work? MDs, JDs, etc are all putting the candidates through the wringer, for relatively low wages, until they’re “experienced”. I’m not saying it’s right, but it’s common knowledge it’s the way things work if you want to have those magic letters of a terminal degree next to your name in your email signature. Don’t want to deal with the machinations required? Opt for the mast…

JD isn't a terminal degree. There's two higher degrees I think. MDs and JDs are professional professional qualifications, which makes their situation a bit different from purely academic degrees. For example the ABA acts kind of like a cartel. I don't think I disagree with you, by the way. I'm just more unhappy about it. All of these sclerotic, even corrupt, institutions acting like aging vats for talented youth, all…

[deleted]

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

#550

Post by garciasn »

xhevahir wrote: post #524
garciasn wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t this sort of how all terminal degrees work? MDs, JDs, etc are all putting the candidates through the wringer, for relatively low wages, until they’re “experienced”. I’m not saying it’s right, but it’s common knowledge it’s the way things work if you want to have those magic letters of a terminal degree next to your name in your email signature. Don’t want to deal with the machinations required? Opt for the mast…

JD isn't a terminal degree. There's two higher degrees I think. MDs and JDs are professional professional qualifications, which makes their situation a bit different from purely academic degrees. For example the ABA acts kind of like a cartel. I don't think I disagree with you, by the way. I'm just more unhappy about it. All of these sclerotic, even corrupt, institutions acting like aging vats for talented youth, all…

A JD is most definitely a terminal degree.

If you need a source; here is one: https://fulbrightscholars.org/sites/default/files/2024-07/US...

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