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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

#701

Post by 9x39 »

teachrdan wrote: post #661
daedrdev wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until last year, the share of wealth by the 1% had been basically flat at 31% for a decade https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBST01134 Your expectations aren't matching reality

I am looking at your link and thinking I took crazy pills. The graph shows just under 23% in 1989, going up past 27% by 1996, then dipping a few years later only to go up to 29% a bit before 2008, then another dip and rise to almost 32% today. Am I misreading the graph? If not, the percentage of wealth owned by the 1% is on track to have increased 50% over ~40 years. (23% --> 34.5%)

True, but GP had scoped their original post to the last decade, and if you look just there (2016-2026) it does appear flat.

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

#702

Post by Levitz »

j_maffe wrote: post #518
Levitz wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that as if talent was kidnapped and dragged against their will. People go to the US because of an abundance of infrastructure and money. Which now goes down. It's a loss.

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

I wish them all the success love and rainbows can provide. They're better off with money though.

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

#703

Post by Levitz »

Arodex wrote: post #525
Levitz wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Are you equating sone teenage students shouting during a conference by some bozo on tour with every middle-aged political representatives from a single party rewriting the law to kneecap the fundamental civil rights of a third of their population?

No, because I don't misrepresent reality to an absurd degree nor do I bring up unrelated stuff.

That seems all too nonsensical.

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

#705

Post by jltsiren »

loeg wrote: post #295
counters wrote: post #192

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. It's also worth noting that the structural costs of research are far larger than what any single institution would be able to shoulder. For instance, MIT has extremely limited superco…

> 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…

Money is not fungible when you are a large organization. Many things that should be possible in principle are impossible in practice due to rules, politics, and institutional inertia.

MIT's endowment is ~80% earmarked to whatever purposes the donors considered important. The remaining ~20% is unrestricted, but unrestricted does not mean unallocated. Everything has already been allocated to some purpose, at least implictly. If you want to allocate more money towards something, you need to take that money from somewhere else. And then you get politics.

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

#706

Post by pastel8739 »

coffeemug wrote: post #467
magicalist wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value absolutely is there. The NSF and NIH were both very cheap and have had huge ROI. The cuts to academic funding have been monumentally stupid.

Brass tacks, if an institution has an overwhelming political leaning toward faction X and works to undermine faction Y, is it really surprising that when Y gets into power it attempts to damage the institution? This is precisely why publicly funded institutions should maintain agnostic political posture.

How do you do this when belief in science, which is important to academic institutions, is unpopular with one faction?

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

#707

Post by pastel8739 »

mohamedkoubaa wrote: post #515
cmiles8 wrote: post #155

Academia is about to go through a generational reset. The system is broken and the market only tolerates broken systems for so long. There are a ton of great things that come out of universities but it’s also clear that a model of charging folks well into the six-figures for a useless degree that doesn’t prepare them for the workforce is dead and a reckoning is underway. Many schools will fail and shut down. Of those…

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.

When do you believe that changed?

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

#708

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

intended wrote: post #573
jvanderbot wrote: post #31

What a Rorschach blot. Comments range from AI to immigration to doomsday results for USA. The admins statement in TFA speaks more to financial policy and grant declines. Unfunded students are much less likely to accept an admission. That's just a fact of life.

The article is politely calling out the effects of the current regime in Washington and indicating that the government is finding other ways to not give funding to schools they don’t like. I am kinda surprised this wasn’t a prominent conversation point.

MIT started it. They cancelled Dorian Abbot in 2021.

Federal funding is supposed to be in the interest of the American people. If you're adopting extreme left-wing politics at the institutional level, and shouting down political views associated with half the country, how exactly is giving you money in the interest of the American people?

I wouldn't expect a far-right university to get federal funds. Why should a far-left university get federal funds?

Furthermore: The US government is trillions of dollars in debt. MIT has billions in their endowment. I'm not sure a rich institution like MIT should be demanding funds from a government which is deeply indebted.

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

#709

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

teachrdan wrote: post #661
daedrdev wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until last year, the share of wealth by the 1% had been basically flat at 31% for a decade https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBST01134 Your expectations aren't matching reality

I am looking at your link and thinking I took crazy pills. The graph shows just under 23% in 1989, going up past 27% by 1996, then dipping a few years later only to go up to 29% a bit before 2008, then another dip and rise to almost 32% today. Am I misreading the graph? If not, the percentage of wealth owned by the 1% is on track to have increased 50% over ~40 years. (23% --> 34.5%)

I don't see why a shift from 23% to 34% should produce a qualitatively different result.

The annual US federal budget is around $7 trillion. The remaining Gates fortune is around $100B. So the feds are chewing through about 70 Gates fortunes per year. And that doesn't even account for state and local spending.

The idea that the system is crumbling because all the money is ending up in the pockets of billionaires does not pass the sniff test.

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

#710

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

shimman wrote: post #553
andix wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Why wouldn't it be in the elite's interests? You're acting like we don't have an entire written history of elites throughout time immortal making terrible decisions that ended up killing 100s of millions of people from things like colonialism or slave trade or selling weapons of death. There is no reason for billionaires to play nice with the public because they will never be held accountable under the current system…

Perhaps you could clarify your view. Here is my understanding:

* The reason MIT has such a big endowment is because wealthy elites gave MIT money.

* The reason MIT is short on federal funds is because poorly educated voters (working-class) put their man in office.

Since you reflexively believe elites are the big bad, you should be happy with the new tax on big endowments like that of MIT. Soak the rich. Perhaps the endowment tax should go even higher. Power to the people.

Sound about right?

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