14 ms·

The Looming Decline of the Public Research University

152 points by stablemap 9y ago

chis 9y ago
This is only semi-related, but it seems like the subtext behind a lot of these articles is that America was better in the 20th century, when elites made all the decisions, and the internet has resulted in too much democracy. This is another problem that boils down to short-sighted politicians voted in to cut spending everywhere and kill regulations. Maybe things were better when a group of elite New Yorkers controlled the entire media and the range of political discourse.
- peatmoss 9y ago
  I'm not sure I buy the implication that elites no longer makes decisions because the Internet democratized the things. I do think that we've metrics-ed our way to forgetting that some things can be a good idea because we value them, not because they satisfy some tacitly accepted value of efficiency.
- mhneu 9y ago
  >This is another problem that boils down to short-sighted politicians No, it's worse than that. It's not short-sighted politicians. It's politicians who are purchased by the very wealthy. Politicians who are selected for their desire to destroy public institutions to cut taxes on the very wealthy. It's not that the politians are just stupid or feckless. They actually have bad intentions because they're paid off. Scott Walker in Wisconsin and Scott Pruitt at EPA are good examples of this kind of politician.
  - jorblumesea 9y ago
    A big part of the issue is the ruling elite are no longer tied to the long term outcome of any singular county. That was the realization at the end of the 20th century. With enough money you can become a citizen of any country, go wherever you want and do whatever. You are a global elite who has more in common with someone of similar social status in another country versus a citizen of birth country. Once this country declines they'll just move somewhere else laughing all the way to the bank. So why not pilfer the richest nation on earth for short term gain? Why support politicians that might not act in your interest? When things start going downhill it's off to Europe or Asia.
    - eecc 9y ago
      That’s what I’ve been thinking in a while... basically the fall of the USSR and the end of Real Socialism experiments across the world have taken the fear of revolution away. All the social achievements of last century are seen as bonuses tipped off to keep the proles from revolting, and now it’s time to take them all back
      - eli_gottlieb 9y ago
        Then the answer is simple and logical: we need a revolution. Make capitalists afraid again!
- dv_dt 9y ago
  Elites are still making all the decisions in the past and now. Actually I think this is a shift of elite thinking from a rounded "greek classics" education, and value of the foundations of civilization line of thinking, to everything has to pay it's way type of thinking.
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    Great description. Old school leaders weren’t as transactional as the people running things today.
  - matt4077 9y ago
    The elephant in the North Korea shop is the obvious exception from that idea. Yes, he's "elite" in economic terms, but he was never, and will never, be part of the social and intellectual "elite" traditionally holding power.
- jccalhoun 9y ago
  With cuts to funding at all levels and an increase in vouchers and for-profit charter schools, I am starting to think that it isn't short-sighted at all. I am starting to think that maybe it is a plan to keep the masses uneducated.
aaron-lebo 9y ago
The article is focused almost entirely on the Rust Belt and Midwest. Kept waiting for the article to expand to the rest of the US, but it could as well be titled: "The Looming Decline of the Midwestern Public Research University". In the South at a second tier university, it amazes me how alive everything seems and how useful the research coming out of there is. I don't really see the decline. The growth and construction and hiring just goes on and on. Wouldn't be shocked if the financial situation of some states (Illinois, hello) would cause some major difficulties with publicly financing education, but is that going on throughout the country? Certainly a danger going forward will be private companies that can far outpace anything academia offers in money, prestige, or mobility. The semi-closed, semi-open nature of the research teams at the bigger companies is confusing, in particular, but if they are disseminating that research, it's hard to argue the private route of research is especially worse than the public.
- rconti 9y ago
  It seems that, generally, public education and research funding is being cut nationwide. It's possible that the powerhouses on the coasts are able to make up for it with fundraising more than midwestern schools are. I can't speak to your experience in the south, but you might have similarly generous donors. Or maybe your state is a standout in public funding.
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    I looked it up, and UT Dallas's most recent endowment numbers are $500 million. I know the state is really good about funding and the state isn't in an especially precarious situation, but "Wisconsin, and Illinois and Ohio State, which together enroll nearly 190,000 students, add up to about $11 billion" still puts UTD well below their mark and 76x less than Harvard's 38 billion. It's been constant growth for at least the last 10 years, so not sure where the funding differential is, what allows a smaller college to thrive, while bigger and more prestigious ones have financial concerns. To be fair, UTD does a fraction of the research of the bigger colleges, so maybe it doesn't come into play.
    - 9y ago
matthewwiese 9y ago
I'm not really sure what to make of this article, as I'm currently a 4th-year student at the main subject, Ohio State. Perhaps as an undergraduate, I am divorced from the specific administrative and funding roadblocks plaguing research faculty, but in my day-to-day activities I see little in the way of a hurting OSU. The university this past year revamped the student living situation on north campus [1][2]. The university is expanding at a feverish pace because students want to come here; we are gaining recognition beyond being simply a football school and aspiring high school students are not considering OSU to be nearly the backup school it once was. Sure, it isn't as flashy to tell your relatives you go to OSU as opposed to MIT or Harvard, but it's not the disappointment most used to consider it to be. This article exposes much that I've been ignorant to as an undergrad, but it feels to blow some issues out of proportion. Sure, we don't nearly have as much funding as private universities, but that's par for the course for a public university which offers cheap tuition for local students, and is generous with its scholarships. And many educated students leave for "greener pastures" upon graduation, but that also feels natural to me. Most students who come here are from Ohio, and so once they get that diploma, it opens doors in the entire country which they are hungry to pursue. Maybe I'm just a bit too thick to see the apocalypse the author is foretelling. [1] http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/home_and_garden/2016/08/21/ohio-colleges-new-dorms-encourage-interaction-outside-rooms-not-luxury-perks.html http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/home_and_garden/2016... [2] https://www.thelantern.com/2016/02/new-residence-halls-set-for-north-campus/ https://www.thelantern.com/2016/02/new-residence-halls-set-f...
- chis 9y ago
  I dunno, I go to Penn State and I made my choice partly based on the research opportunities here. If these big schools start bleeding research and faculty I could see some dark times ahead.
  - matthewwiese 9y ago
    I picked OSU for much the same reason... but your comment appears to agree with mine? You picked Penn b/c you have good research opportunities now, so unless faculty start jumping ship at large volumes in the near future, regular folks like you and I would have made the correct choice, no? The article feels a bit disingenuous to me because it compares funding for hugely popular private universities to those in flyover country. If the author could provide statistics for private universities in Ohio and Pennsylvania that supported the same trend, then I would see his thesis more clearly.
mhneu 9y ago
Think of this article as describing the canary in the coal mine. The effect it describes is absolutely real. Universities in the US are facing serious issues. The university system in the US is the envy of the world right now. But US universities are degrading on several fronts, some internal (rising tuition which drives out smart students from less well off families, most evident now in law schools) and some external (cuts in government funding, most evident in Wisconsin GOP donor attacks on universities and public education more generally[1].) There are some posts below from students who say they don't see much going wrong. Yes, they don't see much going wrong yet. But the underpinnings of universities are being eroded. Research funding is harder to get. NIH and NSF budgets are down 20-30% in real dollars in the past two decades. Meanwhile schools are expanding and hiring more faculty and staff that are supposed to obtain their salaries from NIH and NSF. At the same time the long-held commitment to educating the best students is fading [2]. [1] "Hacked records show Bradley Foundation taking its conservative Wisconsin model national" https://projects.jsonline.com/news/2017/5/5/hacked-records-show-bradley-foundation-taking-wisconsin-model-national.html https://projects.jsonline.com/news/2017/5/5/hacked-records-s... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/book-review-failing-law-schools-by-brian-z-tamanaha/2012/08/03/e7054c9c-c6df-11e1-916d-a4bc61efcad8_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/book-review-failing-... "If you think those claims sting, consider Tamanaha’s argument that law school effectively transfers money from students to relatively well-to-do professors, via student-loan debt — much of which is ultimately guaranteed by federal taxpayers who are generally not as well-off as the typical law professor. Law school faculties are also bastions of liberal politics, and this irony is not lost on Tamanaha, who accuses the professoriate of not only enriching itself but also erecting de facto barriers to upward social mobility and true public-service law practice, all in the name of “academic freedom” and other abstractions."
- baron816 9y ago
  Your point about rising tuition driving out less well off families is also a result of reduced government funding. Research should never be funded by tuition anyway. That research is a public good, the burden for funding it should not be placed on the backs of the nations youth, who have to in turn finance that tuition with debt. It's a shame that one political party in this country has taken to believing that all of the world's problems can be solved with lower taxes (not low taxes, lowER taxes). Externalities and public goods do not exist.
ben_jones 9y ago
I think it's going to be really bad because the people in charge, administrators and executives making large salaries in relatively low COL locations, are going to pretend everything is fine through years of slow burning until there is a nuclear explosion at the end of it. Why turn off the oil well if its benefiting you and you yourself arent hurt by the flames? EDIT: exactly like the mortgage crisis went down
- brandnewlow 9y ago
  And exactly like the situation at newspapers 2005-2015
bogomipz 9y ago
I don't doubt for a minute that these budget cuts are awful but I was struck by the following passage and I'm hoping someone can answer my questions: >"Universities perform more than half of all basic research in America, and public research universities in particular account for nearly 60 percent of the $63.7 billion allocated annually by the federal government for research. That spending, in turn, produces more than 2,600 patents and 400 companies a year, according to the National Science Board." The US Federal Government allocated funding that produces "2,600 patents and 400 companies a year"? Does revenue from those patents and companies not funnel into the University's endowments? Or is this a case of where its the public's money when it comes to funding but private money when that funding produces successful patents and companies and profits? For instance the article mentions Gore-Tex and references, presumably the Mosaic Web Browser. Did profits from those not flow back into the schools? Is there something in their charger that prevents that?
- AlexCoventry 9y ago
  I don't know about your specific examples, but yes, royalties from spin-offs absolutely do flow back to the supporting institution.
  - kapauldo 9y ago
    The problem is 1/1000 patents makes substantial revenue for universities.
    - mjevans 9y ago
      Would it be more cost effective overall to just put those discoveries directly in to the public domain and not worry about the administrative overheads? Further, would the private sector benefit from such crucial hard-research discoveries being public knowledge and thus open for all to benefit from? (Possibly in exchange for a requirement of a minimum number of workers in that field in this country, and an import tariff on products if they aren't locally employing? I could see extending mutual tariff free exchange status among other nations with similar public domain enriching efforts.)
kapauldo 9y ago
Universities have become country clubs. Those funding figures include absurd overhead rates that fund absurd compensation packages for professors and administrators. Tuition has also gotten absurd. This bubble has to burst before we can repair our public universities.
- dcre 9y ago
  I agree with your first sentence, but professors at public universities don't actually make much money compared to other professions with similar education levels. Typical pay is 70-90k. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/04/11/annual-aaup-salary-survey-says-professor-pay-34 https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/04/11/annual-aaup-s...
  - Brybry 9y ago
    My understanding, the last time I looked into it, is that universities have a lot more administrators than they used to and those admins earn a lot more than they used to. And it wasn't just absolute, it was relative to teacher/student ratios and tenured positions growth and educator wage increase.
    - mhneu 9y ago
      Great article on this by a Nobel laureate at Harvard: "A Top-Heavy Administration? By DAVID H. HUBEL January 31, 2012 17 In 1958, Stephen Kuffler was invited to come from Johns Hopkins Medical School to Harvard Medical School to become a full professor in the Department of Pharmacology. He brought with him four post-doctoral fellows: Torsten Wiesel, Ed Furshpan, David Potter, and myself. Along with Ed Kravitz, we formed the nucleus that led to the founding of the Department of Neurobiology five years later. When we arrived, Harvard Medical School was directed by one dean—George Parker Berry. He was assisted by a genius, Henry Meadow, who joined HMS in 1950 as executive secretary to the Committee on Research and Development. The two of them ran the whole school. Berry was grouchy and firm-handed and what he said was law. .... you should see the list of FAS administrators. My printout runs to over 16 pages. I haven't counted up the various kinds of FAS deans, but the list dwarfs that of the Medical School. " http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/1/31/david-hubel-harvard-administration-deans-medical/ http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/1/31/david-hubel-harv...
woodandsteel 9y ago
This problem is happening in part due to the ascent of the conservative political movement. Conservatives hate research universities for two reasons. One is they get their grants from the government, and conservatives believe the government is awful for most things, and research instead be done by private corporations. The other reason is that conservatives see universities as hotbeds of athiest, radical left ideology, and so basically want to shut them down. In fact, one of the founding books of the modern conservative movement is William F. Buckley's God and Man at Yale.
- wuliwong 9y ago
  I'm not sure how you define "modern conservative movement" but I believe Buckley is considered one of the really important neo-conservatives. I believe the more recent (which I would class as modern) movement that is popularly attributed with nationalism is different than the neo-conservative.
  - woodandsteel 9y ago
    By modern, I mean the conservative movement that arose after WWII. See for instance The Conservative Intellectual Movement by George Nash. >I believe Buckley is considered one of the really important neo-conservatives. Actually, the term "neo-conservativism" originally referred to people like Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol who had originally been leftists, and switched to conservativism in the 60's. Later it also came to include the idealistic hawks who supported the invasion of Iran and other aggressive foreign affairs policies. See, for instance, the book Present Dangers edited by William Kristol and Robert Kagan.
- alexryan 9y ago
  > conservatives believe the government is awful for most things, and research instead be done by private corporations. This seems entirely rational to me. A private corporation must strive to meet real human needs in order to survive. Capital tends to flow towards those who are best able to convert it into happiness for other human beings. Public institutions have no such constraint. Logically, one would conclude that they would be less efficient at converting capital into happiness for other human beings. Is there any evidence of which I should be aware which supports the proposition that publicly funded research outperforms privately funded research?
mobilefriendly 9y ago
The main driver is increased state spending on health care, particularly Medicaid. That spending, which is mandatory, crowds out education funding, because states have a balanced budget requirement. Medicaid spending in Illinois, for example, is up 141% since 2000 and health care is 25% of the state budget. Obamacare, which did nothing to control health care costs, actually expanded Medicaid eligibility. https://www.illinoispolicy.org/health-care-costs-consume-25-percent-of-illinois-budget/ https://www.illinoispolicy.org/health-care-costs-consume-25-...
- jbapple 9y ago
  A. It is not mandatory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Federation_of_Independent_Business_v._Sebelius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Federation_of_Indepen... B. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act#Medicaid_expansion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Afforda...: "The federal government paid 100% of the cost of Medicaid eligibility expansion in participating states in 2014, 2015, and 2016; and will pay 95% in 2017, 94% in 2018, 93% in 2019, and 90% in 2020 and all subsequent years."
  - deleted 9y ago
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- Fomite 9y ago
  There's also several states that have locked in that K-12 education automatically gets $X, while higher ed gets whatever is left over. Which means when the education budget gets squeezed, the university system shoulders the burden entirely.
jorblumesea 9y ago
Sadly this will impact the states that are suffering the most and all voted for Trump in the election. The liberal elites on the coasts will be fine, with their Silicon Valley institutions, giant tech companies or Ivy League endowments. The midwest, who already took a huge hit in their economies by losing manufacturing, is losing their one competitive advantage. The inequality gap, already an issue for the midwest, will widen.
davidf18 9y ago
Obamacare/ACA and overly generous state public pension plans (at least in some states) are putting economic pressure on state budgets causing higher education to be underfunded. Increases in Medicaid funding which is shared by fed and state results in less tax money to go towards higher education. Zeke Emmanuel, MD PhD (brother of former Obama Chief of Staff and current Chicago Mayor Rahm), health economist Victor Fuchs, and former Congressional Budget Office Director under Obama Peter Orszag have all stated as much. Boomers had a far greater proportion of their state university higher education paid for by the state than today's students. Completely unfair.

152 points by stablemap 9y ago

chis 9y ago

This is only semi-related, but it seems like the subtext behind a lot of these articles is that America was better in the 20th century, when elites made all the decisions, and the internet has resulted in too much democracy. This is another problem that boils down to short-sighted politicians voted in to cut spending everywhere and kill regulations. Maybe things were better when a group of elite New Yorkers controlled the entire media and the range of political discourse.

peatmoss 9y ago
I'm not sure I buy the implication that elites no longer makes decisions because the Internet democratized the things. I do think that we've metrics-ed our way to forgetting that some things can be a good idea because we value them, not because they satisfy some tacitly accepted value of efficiency.
mhneu 9y ago
>This is another problem that boils down to short-sighted politicians No, it's worse than that. It's not short-sighted politicians. It's politicians who are purchased by the very wealthy. Politicians who are selected for their desire to destroy public institutions to cut taxes on the very wealthy. It's not that the politians are just stupid or feckless. They actually have bad intentions because they're paid off. Scott Walker in Wisconsin and Scott Pruitt at EPA are good examples of this kind of politician.
- jorblumesea 9y ago
  A big part of the issue is the ruling elite are no longer tied to the long term outcome of any singular county. That was the realization at the end of the 20th century. With enough money you can become a citizen of any country, go wherever you want and do whatever. You are a global elite who has more in common with someone of similar social status in another country versus a citizen of birth country. Once this country declines they'll just move somewhere else laughing all the way to the bank. So why not pilfer the richest nation on earth for short term gain? Why support politicians that might not act in your interest? When things start going downhill it's off to Europe or Asia.
  - eecc 9y ago
    That’s what I’ve been thinking in a while... basically the fall of the USSR and the end of Real Socialism experiments across the world have taken the fear of revolution away. All the social achievements of last century are seen as bonuses tipped off to keep the proles from revolting, and now it’s time to take them all back
    - eli_gottlieb 9y ago
      Then the answer is simple and logical: we need a revolution. Make capitalists afraid again!
dv_dt 9y ago
Elites are still making all the decisions in the past and now. Actually I think this is a shift of elite thinking from a rounded "greek classics" education, and value of the foundations of civilization line of thinking, to everything has to pay it's way type of thinking.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  Great description. Old school leaders weren’t as transactional as the people running things today.
- matt4077 9y ago
  The elephant in the North Korea shop is the obvious exception from that idea. Yes, he's "elite" in economic terms, but he was never, and will never, be part of the social and intellectual "elite" traditionally holding power.
jccalhoun 9y ago
With cuts to funding at all levels and an increase in vouchers and for-profit charter schools, I am starting to think that it isn't short-sighted at all. I am starting to think that maybe it is a plan to keep the masses uneducated.

aaron-lebo 9y ago

The article is focused almost entirely on the Rust Belt and Midwest. Kept waiting for the article to expand to the rest of the US, but it could as well be titled: "The Looming Decline of the Midwestern Public Research University". In the South at a second tier university, it amazes me how alive everything seems and how useful the research coming out of there is. I don't really see the decline. The growth and construction and hiring just goes on and on. Wouldn't be shocked if the financial situation of some states (Illinois, hello) would cause some major difficulties with publicly financing education, but is that going on throughout the country? Certainly a danger going forward will be private companies that can far outpace anything academia offers in money, prestige, or mobility. The semi-closed, semi-open nature of the research teams at the bigger companies is confusing, in particular, but if they are disseminating that research, it's hard to argue the private route of research is especially worse than the public.

rconti 9y ago
It seems that, generally, public education and research funding is being cut nationwide. It's possible that the powerhouses on the coasts are able to make up for it with fundraising more than midwestern schools are. I can't speak to your experience in the south, but you might have similarly generous donors. Or maybe your state is a standout in public funding.
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  I looked it up, and UT Dallas's most recent endowment numbers are $500 million. I know the state is really good about funding and the state isn't in an especially precarious situation, but "Wisconsin, and Illinois and Ohio State, which together enroll nearly 190,000 students, add up to about $11 billion" still puts UTD well below their mark and 76x less than Harvard's 38 billion. It's been constant growth for at least the last 10 years, so not sure where the funding differential is, what allows a smaller college to thrive, while bigger and more prestigious ones have financial concerns. To be fair, UTD does a fraction of the research of the bigger colleges, so maybe it doesn't come into play.
  - 9y ago

matthewwiese 9y ago

I'm not really sure what to make of this article, as I'm currently a 4th-year student at the main subject, Ohio State. Perhaps as an undergraduate, I am divorced from the specific administrative and funding roadblocks plaguing research faculty, but in my day-to-day activities I see little in the way of a hurting OSU. The university this past year revamped the student living situation on north campus [1][2]. The university is expanding at a feverish pace because students want to come here; we are gaining recognition beyond being simply a football school and aspiring high school students are not considering OSU to be nearly the backup school it once was. Sure, it isn't as flashy to tell your relatives you go to OSU as opposed to MIT or Harvard, but it's not the disappointment most used to consider it to be. This article exposes much that I've been ignorant to as an undergrad, but it feels to blow some issues out of proportion. Sure, we don't nearly have as much funding as private universities, but that's par for the course for a public university which offers cheap tuition for local students, and is generous with its scholarships. And many educated students leave for "greener pastures" upon graduation, but that also feels natural to me. Most students who come here are from Ohio, and so once they get that diploma, it opens doors in the entire country which they are hungry to pursue. Maybe I'm just a bit too thick to see the apocalypse the author is foretelling. [1] http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/home_and_garden/2016/08/21/ohio-colleges-new-dorms-encourage-interaction-outside-rooms-not-luxury-perks.html http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/home_and_garden/2016... [2] https://www.thelantern.com/2016/02/new-residence-halls-set-for-north-campus/ https://www.thelantern.com/2016/02/new-residence-halls-set-f...

chis 9y ago
I dunno, I go to Penn State and I made my choice partly based on the research opportunities here. If these big schools start bleeding research and faculty I could see some dark times ahead.
- matthewwiese 9y ago
  I picked OSU for much the same reason... but your comment appears to agree with mine? You picked Penn b/c you have good research opportunities now, so unless faculty start jumping ship at large volumes in the near future, regular folks like you and I would have made the correct choice, no? The article feels a bit disingenuous to me because it compares funding for hugely popular private universities to those in flyover country. If the author could provide statistics for private universities in Ohio and Pennsylvania that supported the same trend, then I would see his thesis more clearly.

mhneu 9y ago

Think of this article as describing the canary in the coal mine. The effect it describes is absolutely real. Universities in the US are facing serious issues. The university system in the US is the envy of the world right now. But US universities are degrading on several fronts, some internal (rising tuition which drives out smart students from less well off families, most evident now in law schools) and some external (cuts in government funding, most evident in Wisconsin GOP donor attacks on universities and public education more generally[1].) There are some posts below from students who say they don't see much going wrong. Yes, they don't see much going wrong yet. But the underpinnings of universities are being eroded. Research funding is harder to get. NIH and NSF budgets are down 20-30% in real dollars in the past two decades. Meanwhile schools are expanding and hiring more faculty and staff that are supposed to obtain their salaries from NIH and NSF. At the same time the long-held commitment to educating the best students is fading [2]. [1] "Hacked records show Bradley Foundation taking its conservative Wisconsin model national" https://projects.jsonline.com/news/2017/5/5/hacked-records-show-bradley-foundation-taking-wisconsin-model-national.html https://projects.jsonline.com/news/2017/5/5/hacked-records-s... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/book-review-failing-law-schools-by-brian-z-tamanaha/2012/08/03/e7054c9c-c6df-11e1-916d-a4bc61efcad8_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/book-review-failing-... "If you think those claims sting, consider Tamanaha’s argument that law school effectively transfers money from students to relatively well-to-do professors, via student-loan debt — much of which is ultimately guaranteed by federal taxpayers who are generally not as well-off as the typical law professor. Law school faculties are also bastions of liberal politics, and this irony is not lost on Tamanaha, who accuses the professoriate of not only enriching itself but also erecting de facto barriers to upward social mobility and true public-service law practice, all in the name of “academic freedom” and other abstractions."

baron816 9y ago
Your point about rising tuition driving out less well off families is also a result of reduced government funding. Research should never be funded by tuition anyway. That research is a public good, the burden for funding it should not be placed on the backs of the nations youth, who have to in turn finance that tuition with debt. It's a shame that one political party in this country has taken to believing that all of the world's problems can be solved with lower taxes (not low taxes, lowER taxes). Externalities and public goods do not exist.

ben_jones 9y ago

I think it's going to be really bad because the people in charge, administrators and executives making large salaries in relatively low COL locations, are going to pretend everything is fine through years of slow burning until there is a nuclear explosion at the end of it. Why turn off the oil well if its benefiting you and you yourself arent hurt by the flames? EDIT: exactly like the mortgage crisis went down

brandnewlow 9y ago
And exactly like the situation at newspapers 2005-2015

bogomipz 9y ago

I don't doubt for a minute that these budget cuts are awful but I was struck by the following passage and I'm hoping someone can answer my questions: >"Universities perform more than half of all basic research in America, and public research universities in particular account for nearly 60 percent of the $63.7 billion allocated annually by the federal government for research. That spending, in turn, produces more than 2,600 patents and 400 companies a year, according to the National Science Board." The US Federal Government allocated funding that produces "2,600 patents and 400 companies a year"? Does revenue from those patents and companies not funnel into the University's endowments? Or is this a case of where its the public's money when it comes to funding but private money when that funding produces successful patents and companies and profits? For instance the article mentions Gore-Tex and references, presumably the Mosaic Web Browser. Did profits from those not flow back into the schools? Is there something in their charger that prevents that?

AlexCoventry 9y ago
I don't know about your specific examples, but yes, royalties from spin-offs absolutely do flow back to the supporting institution.
- kapauldo 9y ago
  The problem is 1/1000 patents makes substantial revenue for universities.
  - mjevans 9y ago
    Would it be more cost effective overall to just put those discoveries directly in to the public domain and not worry about the administrative overheads? Further, would the private sector benefit from such crucial hard-research discoveries being public knowledge and thus open for all to benefit from? (Possibly in exchange for a requirement of a minimum number of workers in that field in this country, and an import tariff on products if they aren't locally employing? I could see extending mutual tariff free exchange status among other nations with similar public domain enriching efforts.)

kapauldo 9y ago

Universities have become country clubs. Those funding figures include absurd overhead rates that fund absurd compensation packages for professors and administrators. Tuition has also gotten absurd. This bubble has to burst before we can repair our public universities.

dcre 9y ago
I agree with your first sentence, but professors at public universities don't actually make much money compared to other professions with similar education levels. Typical pay is 70-90k. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/04/11/annual-aaup-salary-survey-says-professor-pay-34 https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/04/11/annual-aaup-s...
- Brybry 9y ago
  My understanding, the last time I looked into it, is that universities have a lot more administrators than they used to and those admins earn a lot more than they used to. And it wasn't just absolute, it was relative to teacher/student ratios and tenured positions growth and educator wage increase.
  - mhneu 9y ago
    Great article on this by a Nobel laureate at Harvard: "A Top-Heavy Administration? By DAVID H. HUBEL January 31, 2012 17 In 1958, Stephen Kuffler was invited to come from Johns Hopkins Medical School to Harvard Medical School to become a full professor in the Department of Pharmacology. He brought with him four post-doctoral fellows: Torsten Wiesel, Ed Furshpan, David Potter, and myself. Along with Ed Kravitz, we formed the nucleus that led to the founding of the Department of Neurobiology five years later. When we arrived, Harvard Medical School was directed by one dean—George Parker Berry. He was assisted by a genius, Henry Meadow, who joined HMS in 1950 as executive secretary to the Committee on Research and Development. The two of them ran the whole school. Berry was grouchy and firm-handed and what he said was law. .... you should see the list of FAS administrators. My printout runs to over 16 pages. I haven't counted up the various kinds of FAS deans, but the list dwarfs that of the Medical School. " http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/1/31/david-hubel-harvard-administration-deans-medical/ http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/1/31/david-hubel-harv...

woodandsteel 9y ago

This problem is happening in part due to the ascent of the conservative political movement. Conservatives hate research universities for two reasons. One is they get their grants from the government, and conservatives believe the government is awful for most things, and research instead be done by private corporations. The other reason is that conservatives see universities as hotbeds of athiest, radical left ideology, and so basically want to shut them down. In fact, one of the founding books of the modern conservative movement is William F. Buckley's God and Man at Yale.

wuliwong 9y ago
I'm not sure how you define "modern conservative movement" but I believe Buckley is considered one of the really important neo-conservatives. I believe the more recent (which I would class as modern) movement that is popularly attributed with nationalism is different than the neo-conservative.
- woodandsteel 9y ago
  By modern, I mean the conservative movement that arose after WWII. See for instance The Conservative Intellectual Movement by George Nash. >I believe Buckley is considered one of the really important neo-conservatives. Actually, the term "neo-conservativism" originally referred to people like Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol who had originally been leftists, and switched to conservativism in the 60's. Later it also came to include the idealistic hawks who supported the invasion of Iran and other aggressive foreign affairs policies. See, for instance, the book Present Dangers edited by William Kristol and Robert Kagan.
alexryan 9y ago
> conservatives believe the government is awful for most things, and research instead be done by private corporations. This seems entirely rational to me. A private corporation must strive to meet real human needs in order to survive. Capital tends to flow towards those who are best able to convert it into happiness for other human beings. Public institutions have no such constraint. Logically, one would conclude that they would be less efficient at converting capital into happiness for other human beings. Is there any evidence of which I should be aware which supports the proposition that publicly funded research outperforms privately funded research?

mobilefriendly 9y ago

The main driver is increased state spending on health care, particularly Medicaid. That spending, which is mandatory, crowds out education funding, because states have a balanced budget requirement. Medicaid spending in Illinois, for example, is up 141% since 2000 and health care is 25% of the state budget. Obamacare, which did nothing to control health care costs, actually expanded Medicaid eligibility. https://www.illinoispolicy.org/health-care-costs-consume-25-percent-of-illinois-budget/ https://www.illinoispolicy.org/health-care-costs-consume-25-...

jbapple 9y ago
A. It is not mandatory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Federation_of_Independent_Business_v._Sebelius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Federation_of_Indepen... B. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act#Medicaid_expansion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Afforda...: "The federal government paid 100% of the cost of Medicaid eligibility expansion in participating states in 2014, 2015, and 2016; and will pay 95% in 2017, 94% in 2018, 93% in 2019, and 90% in 2020 and all subsequent years."
- deleted 9y ago
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Fomite 9y ago
There's also several states that have locked in that K-12 education automatically gets $X, while higher ed gets whatever is left over. Which means when the education budget gets squeezed, the university system shoulders the burden entirely.

jorblumesea 9y ago

Sadly this will impact the states that are suffering the most and all voted for Trump in the election. The liberal elites on the coasts will be fine, with their Silicon Valley institutions, giant tech companies or Ivy League endowments. The midwest, who already took a huge hit in their economies by losing manufacturing, is losing their one competitive advantage. The inequality gap, already an issue for the midwest, will widen.

davidf18 9y ago

Obamacare/ACA and overly generous state public pension plans (at least in some states) are putting economic pressure on state budgets causing higher education to be underfunded. Increases in Medicaid funding which is shared by fed and state results in less tax money to go towards higher education. Zeke Emmanuel, MD PhD (brother of former Obama Chief of Staff and current Chicago Mayor Rahm), health economist Victor Fuchs, and former Congressional Budget Office Director under Obama Peter Orszag have all stated as much. Boomers had a far greater proportion of their state university higher education paid for by the state than today's students. Completely unfair.