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2025 Hiring Pause

hr.cornell.edu

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Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#71

Post by userbinator »

apples_oranges wrote: post #58
userbinator wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

and then tests me to check if I understand

That's what interviews are for.

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#72

Post by EternalFury »

f6v wrote: post #57
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.

It costs someone something, but no one their freedom. Mass ignorance is the opposite.

As for degrees with no use, pretty sure these are the byproducts of education for profit, with heavy marketing passing as administrative expense.

Maybe you could divide the system in two halves: 1) Of national interest, 2) Discretionary.

As for earning potential, it has nothing to do with free education, as so many high-earners in the US were educated by such systems.

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#73

Post by fsh »

loganriebel wrote: post #6

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

With an optimistic 10% annual return, this would amount to 1/5 of Cornell's budget.

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#74

Post by berkes »

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 so much that you cannot learn from the Internet, but must practiced, coached, steered, etc. That needs fysical things to interact with. That need teams, colleagues, or other humans.

People who think you can learn "everything" from the Internet have a very limited view of "everything". And could probably learn about the world by going out there ;)

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#75

Post by znpy »

> To ensure that we continue to thrive in an even more complex future, we must commit, across every part of our institution, to a sustainable budget today.

Are they implicitly admitting they have been living on an unsustainable budget so far?

Seeing other comments bringing up the numbers of staff vs students+faculty would suggest that’s the case…

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#76

Post by sega_sai »

znpy wrote: post #75

> To ensure that we continue to thrive in an even more complex future, we must commit, across every part of our institution, to a sustainable budget today. Are they implicitly admitting they have been living on an unsustainable budget so far? Seeing other comments bringing up the numbers of staff vs students+faculty would suggest that’s the case…

They had a sustainable budget, but the government decided to cut already agreed budgets.

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#77

Post by ein0p »

Reason077 wrote: post #21
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 ratio of staff to students is nearly 1:1" > "This is insane." "This expansion is largely at the School of Medicine, where the yearly staff growth rate of 5.6% is significantly higher than the 1.7% rate across the rest of the University... School of Medicine spokesperson Courtney Lodato wrote that the increase largely includes clinical educators who teach and provide clinical care, financed by external research…

Still, 1:1? Please.

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#78

Post by ein0p »

derbOac wrote: post #35
loganriebel wrote: post #6

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

Just for perspective, the annual research budget of a university I looked at the numbers for recently (not Cornell, but R1) would go through that in less than two decades, even if it were completely dedicated to research and nothing else.

You're assuming they won't make any money on licensing or investments. Which they most certainly will.

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#79

Post by whoisburbansky »

ein0p wrote: post #77
Reason077 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The ratio of staff to students is nearly 1:1" > "This is insane." "This expansion is largely at the School of Medicine, where the yearly staff growth rate of 5.6% is significantly higher than the 1.7% rate across the rest of the University... School of Medicine spokesperson Courtney Lodato wrote that the increase largely includes clinical educators who teach and provide clinical care, financed by external research…

Still, 1:1? Please.

I mean, if you tack on a hospital to a university, the correct denominator to compare against is "patients served," not "students educated," at least for the portion of the headcount you're sticking in the numerator.

Re: 2025 Hiring Pause

#80

Post by tzs »

cuuupid wrote: post #19
submeta wrote: post #4

> due to "significant financial uncertainty" in higher education, This is directly linked to the new Trump administration's policies. The university explicitly cites potential deep cuts to federal research funding, new tax legislation affecting endowment income, and ongoing concerns about rapid growth and escalating costs as primary reasons for this decision. This move comes as Cornell and 11 other universities have…

> This move comes as Cornell and 11 other universities have filed a lawsuit against the National Institutes of Health over funding restrictions that could cost Cornell $80 million. This is less than 0.75% of Cornell's endowment, so I'm not sure there is a strong case for causation here.

I think you may misunderstand how endowments work.

An endowment is a collection of funds that have been donated. Generally each donation is for furtherance of some specific aim that the donor wanted to promote.

Usually the terms of the donation are that the money should be managed to support the purpose for which it was donated in perpetuity. To implement that the managers of the endowment invest the money for long term growth, and use the earnings to go toward the purpose of the donation.

Cornell currently spends each year around 5% from their endowment, as do most other top schools.

Endowments are usually not used to make up unexpected shortfalls for at least 2 reasons:

1. They are already spending all they can consistent with supporting the various causes the donors donated in perpetuity.

2. Because the endowment is a collection of individual donations that were donated for different purposes there might not actually be anything in the endowment that can be used towards a particular shortfall.

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