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American science to soon face its largest brain drain in history

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Re: American science to soon face its largest brain drain in history

#81

Post by elashri »

dangus wrote: post #72
ribosometronome wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would we want tuition to support research?

I think the cynical student paying tuition in America would ask what the money is actually paying for and why it can’t cover the full cost of programs and research given that it’s so high. Let’s say you go to Ohio State. The out of state (unsubsidized) tuition comes out to about $37,000 for full time tuition. That’s around 108 hours of instruction per year by my estimation. Students are paying $342 per lecture hour,…

Unfortunately the way students and the culture around them require in a university is much more than instruction hours. You need to pqy for all the infrastructure and the amenities that these students except and many will choose based on that. I was talking to a couple of parents during a visit recently and they focused more on what the experience their kids will get at my university. They were mostly not talking about education experience.

And most universities don't have any significant endowment and they don't work like what you think. Most of these are money for specific goal. i.e as rich alumni of CS program I can donate $100m and ask the university to invest them or put them in a bank and then pay grants for CS students. The university is legally bounded to not use the money for anything else. But this will be counted as +$100m endowment money for my university.

Re: American science to soon face its largest brain drain in history

#82

Post by Herring »

Nevermark wrote: post #71
Herring wrote: post #43

Americans getting a crash course in how white supremacy destroys itself. Did you know: Slavery was so profitable, it sprouted more millionaires per capita in the Mississippi River valley than anywhere in the nation. Look at them now. https://www.history.com/articles/slavery-profitable-southern...

The parallel isn’t perfect. But the deep irrationality driving artificial opportunistic ideological divides (this time less raw white supremacy, but still a lot of xenophobia, party loyalty propaganda, cult of personality, and fear and backlash with respect to minorities), drives sub-cultures like lemmings, off the cliff of reality. Taking the rest of us with them. Obvious even as it becomes unstoppable.

Yeah and the infrastructure of economic/political exclusion is initially just used against that "horrible" group X, but eventually expands to the majority of the population. This is because greed is basically an endless hole. They get to threaten the wider population "toe the line or you'll end up like them".

A lot of times the effects are invisible. I doubt everyday Mississippians even think about how slavers stole their future from them. Americans barely ever think about the trillions of dollars that the Iraq war wasted/stole.

Re: American science to soon face its largest brain drain in history

#83

Post by SailingCactus33 »

rybosome wrote: post #75
msgodel wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I cannot for the life of me think of what you are referring to. If it’s COVID-related mandates like vaccines and lockdowns, then surely it’s obvious that NASA had nothing to do with that? There is no single issue that I can see linking all of these science organizations together. Even if it’s about budget, there are bigger targets.

They went off mission. Here is a NASA example that might help linking it together: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11457489/

Re: American science to soon face its largest brain drain in history

#84

Post by analog31 »

Loughla wrote: post #33
analog31 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was probably an omission. Fill it in, and it makes sense. I believe the NIH is larger than the NSF. In addition to funding research, these agencies also fund education, both directly and indirectly.

Correct. One of the guys in my cohort in post graduate work was funded by a grant from the NIH.

And in my case, the NSF.

Re: American science to soon face its largest brain drain in history

#85

Post by dotnet00 »

TSiege wrote: post #78
api wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK the massive influx of cash into universities for the last 30 years or so has gone into administration, which is basically a jobs program, not academics.

I believe that's tuition. Grants fund scientists research directly. It funds labs, hires grad students, etc

A decent chunk of the grant money goes to the university, and a chunk of the money used to pay the students also loops back to the university in the form of non-tuition fees, rent etc.

Re: American science to soon face its largest brain drain in history

#86

Post by magicalhippo »

foxglacier wrote: post #59
magicalhippo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gov't here in Norway put $10 million on the table[1] for 2026 as a response to what's going on in the US. Due to reasons they can't direct it solely at US researchers, but the intent is there: The minister has followed the recent developments in the United States closely: "Academic freedom is under pressure in the United States, and it is an unpredictable situation for many researchers in what has been the world'…

Yea that's practically nothing, even accounting for your population. It's $2/person compared to NASA's pre-cut budget of about $80/person/year. Where are all these other countries that might pick up the slack? Seems nobody else in the world wants to pay for science. They might complain about American science funding cuts but are happy to keep their already tiny science budgets tiny. Norway's overall science budget is…

Where did you get that $1 billion figure from? From what I can see[1][2], it's more like $4.6 billion? In that case it would be more like $920/person/year.

[1]: https://www.fpol.no/det-norske-statsbudsjettet-2025-gir-en-n...

[2]: https://nifu.brage.unit.no/nifu-xmlui/handle/11250/3166076 (second page, first section)

Re: American science to soon face its largest brain drain in history

#87

Post by dotnet00 »

rainsford wrote: post #58
andsoitis wrote: post #4

> Many of the most valuable scientific organizations in the world, including NOAA, NASA, the NSF, the CDC, the EPA, and the FDA, I don’t dismiss the premise of the article and I think it is a shame how these organizations are being impacted, but I don’t know that these are the best exemplars of cutting edge science being shut down that will lead to America’s downfall from its scientific perch.

Why do you believe those aren't good examples of cutting edge science funding? I get the stereotype that government organizations of all types are just stodgy bureaucrats stuck a few decades in the past, but the reality at least in the US in the year 2025 is that truly cutting edge science is not obviously being funded at any significant scale anywhere but government. The world of privately funded research organizati…

To be fair, there are still many well funded private research labs, they just focus on "sexy" easy-to-market science like quantum computing, photonics, deep learning, robotics etc.

Re: American science to soon face its largest brain drain in history

#88

Post by linguae »

sevensor wrote: post #37
ribosometronome wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would we want tuition to support research?

If we assume science still has new things to tell the world, who better for researchers to share their discoveries with than the next generation? That’s the argument, anyway. In practice, it’s a crapshoot. Many researchers are dreadful educators due to incentives, training, and disposition. Every now and then you’ll run across a researcher who is also a great educator, but there’s no institutional force that pushes t…

Right; a professor's tenure at many research universities depends on the professor's publication and grant-raising success, with less of an emphasis on a professor's teaching performance.

That's one of the things I like about teaching at a community college; whether or not I get tenure is based largely on my teaching performance, with service to the college and community making up the remainder of my evaluation. While I don't have upper-division undergrads, grad students, or postdocs, I have no research pressures whatsoever, which, interestingly enough, is the ultimate form of research freedom. I don't have a lot of time during the school year since I teach a 4-4 load, but I'm officially off duty during my one-month winter break and my 2.5-month summer break, which means I could do whatever I want during my breaks, including research (I'm actually in Japan right now as a visiting researcher at a Japanese university).

There are some teaching-oriented universities that have different balances regarding the importance of teaching and research in making tenure/promotion decisions, ranging from comprehensive masters-focused universities like those in the California State University system to private liberal arts colleges such as Swarthmore.

Re: American science to soon face its largest brain drain in history

#89

Post by sevensor »

bobthepanda wrote: post #48
sevensor wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we assume science still has new things to tell the world, who better for researchers to share their discoveries with than the next generation? That’s the argument, anyway. In practice, it’s a crapshoot. Many researchers are dreadful educators due to incentives, training, and disposition. Every now and then you’ll run across a researcher who is also a great educator, but there’s no institutional force that pushes t…

That explains why you would want researchers to teach students, but not why students (who generally have little to no income to speak of and are already struggling with university costs in the US) should directly pay for research

Perhaps I was unclear. The argument is that being educated by a groundbreaking researcher is better than being educated by someone who merely knows things, and so it’s worth a tuition premium. Like I said, I think that position is full of holes, but it’s not incoherent.

Re: American science to soon face its largest brain drain in history

#90

Post by whatshisface »

dotnet00 wrote: post #87
rainsford wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you believe those aren't good examples of cutting edge science funding? I get the stereotype that government organizations of all types are just stodgy bureaucrats stuck a few decades in the past, but the reality at least in the US in the year 2025 is that truly cutting edge science is not obviously being funded at any significant scale anywhere but government. The world of privately funded research organizati…

To be fair, there are still many well funded private research labs, they just focus on "sexy" easy-to-market science like quantum computing, photonics, deep learning, robotics etc.

That's engineering. Science involves laws and facts about the natural world that are not yet known.
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