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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

#651

Post by ryoshoe »

just_some_guy_2 wrote: post #569
ceejayoz wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree; it's simply irrelevant here. We either accept "there are some things you shouldn't be able to democratically vote for" like, say, the Holocaust or reinstating slavery, or we do not. You added Trump to the conversation, not me.

Isn't that basically what a constitution is for? A constitutional monarchy limits the power of the king, and a constitutional democracy limits the power of the elected government?

The constitution isn't static. Amendments can be repealed. An elected government could appoint judges to overturn any previous precedents

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

#652

Post by tayo42 »

jrk wrote: post #605
nomadygnt wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To make "next to nothing" concrete: MIT EECS PhD students are currently paid about $4700/mo. This is substantially less than they'd make in industry, but it's around the US median personal income across all working-age adults, and well above the average 24 year-old. They frequently make a substantial extra at summer internships, putting them well above US median in the years when they do. Also: it is school, not just…

It's 56k a year for 6 years?

I don't think the entire US matters for this point your trying to make. What are college educated people making in a city like Boston.

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

#653

Post by elteto »

bongoman42 wrote: post #203
elteto wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fund them to do what exactly? Come up with their own research ideas? You got the pipeline backwards. The government picks the research areas/priorities then allocates funding for those, and universities apply and compete to get grants. _Then_, once a grant is given to a school, is funding for labs and graduate students allocated. If the government has no interest in doing research and provides no funding then schools…

Government is not great at picking up or creating ideas. Academia has to lead in that and then show government why it would be best for the nation to fund those. The government is good at long term funding for ideas that may not be the best for private sector right away but it should not be creating ideas themselves otherwise you would get things like Lysenkoism.

Allow me to disagree while I look back at the last 80 years of US government-funded research.

The government isn’t “picking” the research topics. It’s the scientists in places like the NSF that are. No system is perfect but some system is better than nothing, which is where we are going.

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

#654

Post by mold_aid »

Balgair wrote: post #601
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…

https://acoup.blog/2021/10/01/collections-so-you-want-to-go-... This is a timeless entry. It's aimed at humanities, but every STEMy person I have shown it to agrees with it. TLDR: Only get a PhD under 2 conditions: 1 - You are rich and otherwise very bored. 2 - If by Christmas in your first year in grad school, you are absolutely certain that you and your PI get along so well that nothing could hold you back from car…

2 is key. omg the number of students who are like "I want to be a professor" and can barely name a program they're targeting much less the people in it

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

#656

Post by conformist »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #589
EvgeniyZh wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this is CS-specific? Finishing physics PhD from high school in 6 years sounds just not enough time. Even exceptional people I know in my field needed at least 7-8 (3+4 or 3+2+3). 3 years into theoretical physics grad school is around the time people start doing decent research

I have three friends with Physics PhDs from Imperial and Cambridge and they did it in three years. That is/was the norm.

Yeah 3 - 4 is typical in STEM at Imperial, depends on the scholarship or funding source. The standard funding tends to assume 3 - 3.5 years, but I vaguely recall that in some departments supervisors had a habit of forcing people to stick around for a few months without funding.

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

#657

Post by caminante »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #639
mrlongroots wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, they don't realize it or lie to themselves because ~50% dropout. I think there's some misinterpretation here. Not staying on in academia after PhD (common/modal) is not the same as not getting to complete a PhD (rare). In CS/tech, those who exit academia after PhDs get paid $300K-$500K in the industry. I don't think there's any misleading going on.

PhD programs have remarkably high attrition rates prior to graduation (ie dropout). I don't know that it's 50% and obviously it varies by institution and field but it's quite large.

>In CS/tech, those who exit academia after PhDs get paid $300K-$500K

Yes, I'd like to see data on what percentile gets this and breaks even for lost wages from their PhD years. IMHO, it's not fair to generalize this outcome. I could be wrong.

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

#658

Post by j_maffe »

epolanski wrote: post #606
j_maffe wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those great minds will go to other nations where they're more appreciated.

I don't think you've ever worked in academia or research. If you want to do cutting edge research you need money. Try to do it in Italy, where an entire university has only one MRI working at 400 Mhz. Then you go to EPFL, Switzerland, and a single lab has 15, I repeat, 15 .8 GHz MRIs. Each of those instruments is in multi million $ range and requires expensive staffing and maintenance. Then you need chemicals, you ne…

> I don't think you've ever worked in academia or research.

I'm doing a PhD in STEM in a major Western European university.

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

#659

Post by malcolmgreaves »

dyauspitr wrote: post #621
mohamedkoubaa wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's simple. The US used to be the most desirable place for immigrants and the US higher education system used to be the envy of the world and now for both of these it is not any more. A reset was always inevitable.

I don’t know what you’re talking about but both of those are definitely still true. It’s just that this administration is trying to stop the first from happening.

And the second.

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

#660

Post by mohamedkoubaa »

ModernMech wrote: post #644
mohamedkoubaa wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of a system is what it does and how it's used in practice, my friend.

That's an interpretation, not a fact. And “glorified immigration program” is not a neutral factual label because it implies the educational function is mostly pretextual. I can understand your perspective, but please stop pretending to me that you're simply making factual statements and not a value judgement.

It is pretextual for a lot of foreign students, I don't know how anyone can deny that in good faith. Its definitely not a value judgements because I never said whether it's a good or bad thing on net. Sometimes good things have to be smuggled through a pretext.
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