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This problem is happening in part due to the ascent of the conservative political movement. Conservatives hate research universities for two reasons. One is t

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?
- iskander 9y ago
  Have you ever worked in a research capacity at either an academic or for-profit institution? My experience has been that private for-profit entities are good at scale and terrible at discovering new ideas.
  - alexryan 9y ago
    Small sample size? I believe there are a few private for-profit companies which have discovered a new idea or two.
    - iskander 9y ago
      In biomedicine, at least, I'd really need some examples. Every break-through I can think of came from publicly funded research, which then gets turned into a product.
    - speedplane 9y ago
      I'd bet that the vast majority of industry innovations can be linked to corresponding work in academia. That's not to say that industry doesn't innovate, but they clearly feed off each other in a mutually beneficial way.
- jamesrcole 9y ago
  Do you think they're better for basic research? Where would society be without the basic research that was done over the last century?
  - thanatropism 9y ago
    What's the limit of basic vs. applied research? AT&T has 8 Nobel prizes under its belt. At least three are fundamental science: 1937: Clinton J. Davisson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for demonstrating the wave nature of matter. 1978: Arno A. Penzias and Robert W. Wilson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics. Penzias and Wilson were cited for their discovering cosmic microwave background radiation, a nearly uniform glow that fills the Universe in the microwave band of the radio spectrum. 1998: Horst Störmer, Robert Laughlin, and Daniel Tsui, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering and explaining the fractional quantum Hall effect.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
banned1 9y ago
This has been happening for a while, so your statement is false. Even under Obama, funding suffered. https://www.aaas.org/news/science-and-technology-funding-under-obama-look-back https://www.aaas.org/news/science-and-technology-funding-und... It is best to think of the problem as the inability of the executive branch to work with Congress. This is not a result of the “ascent of the conservative political movement” as you call it. It is simply a result of a polarized political environment, both by left wingers (Obama) or right wingers (Trump). Both made it a point to leave the other side out in the cold after winning (remember Schumer saying that Dems passing Healthcare alone was a strategic mistake?) We don’t have to let political persuasion blind us from reality of where we are since Obama won the first time: a divided country. https://www.google.com/amp/thehill.com/policy/healthcare/225300-schumer-dems-erred-with-obamacare%3famp https://www.google.com/amp/thehill.com/policy/healthcare/225...
cdoxsey 9y ago
The University's primary purpose for most people is to educate their children. There are major problems with the way it does this currently. It costs a fortune, fails to provide the necessary skills for the modern workforce and, in many ways, has abandoned it's traditional liberal arts focus for one of identity politics, indoctrination, and an anything-goes culture of alcohol abuse and total sexual freedom. That's conservative, but not particularly partisan. Our schools are in trouble and we're shooting the messenger. You might be surprised to learn that most conservatives, just like liberals, send their kids to Universities and pay a lot of money each year to do it. Anyway, as for a research focus, I think there's disagreement on the conservative side over that issue. I think what most concerns them is waste (not actually getting research despite spending so much money on it) and ideological capture. When University leadership all shares the same political beliefs they will sometimes use the research money they're given to fund very political projects. I think it's entirely rational to want to stop funding a project which seeks to undermine everything you believe in. A solution would be to refocus on real research and seek ideological diversity.

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?

iskander 9y ago
Have you ever worked in a research capacity at either an academic or for-profit institution? My experience has been that private for-profit entities are good at scale and terrible at discovering new ideas.
- alexryan 9y ago
  Small sample size? I believe there are a few private for-profit companies which have discovered a new idea or two.
  - iskander 9y ago
    In biomedicine, at least, I'd really need some examples. Every break-through I can think of came from publicly funded research, which then gets turned into a product.
  - speedplane 9y ago
    I'd bet that the vast majority of industry innovations can be linked to corresponding work in academia. That's not to say that industry doesn't innovate, but they clearly feed off each other in a mutually beneficial way.
jamesrcole 9y ago
Do you think they're better for basic research? Where would society be without the basic research that was done over the last century?
- thanatropism 9y ago
  What's the limit of basic vs. applied research? AT&T has 8 Nobel prizes under its belt. At least three are fundamental science: 1937: Clinton J. Davisson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for demonstrating the wave nature of matter. 1978: Arno A. Penzias and Robert W. Wilson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics. Penzias and Wilson were cited for their discovering cosmic microwave background radiation, a nearly uniform glow that fills the Universe in the microwave band of the radio spectrum. 1998: Horst Störmer, Robert Laughlin, and Daniel Tsui, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering and explaining the fractional quantum Hall effect.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

banned1 9y ago

This has been happening for a while, so your statement is false. Even under Obama, funding suffered. https://www.aaas.org/news/science-and-technology-funding-under-obama-look-back https://www.aaas.org/news/science-and-technology-funding-und... It is best to think of the problem as the inability of the executive branch to work with Congress. This is not a result of the “ascent of the conservative political movement” as you call it. It is simply a result of a polarized political environment, both by left wingers (Obama) or right wingers (Trump). Both made it a point to leave the other side out in the cold after winning (remember Schumer saying that Dems passing Healthcare alone was a strategic mistake?) We don’t have to let political persuasion blind us from reality of where we are since Obama won the first time: a divided country. https://www.google.com/amp/thehill.com/policy/healthcare/225300-schumer-dems-erred-with-obamacare%3famp https://www.google.com/amp/thehill.com/policy/healthcare/225...

cdoxsey 9y ago

The University's primary purpose for most people is to educate their children. There are major problems with the way it does this currently. It costs a fortune, fails to provide the necessary skills for the modern workforce and, in many ways, has abandoned it's traditional liberal arts focus for one of identity politics, indoctrination, and an anything-goes culture of alcohol abuse and total sexual freedom. That's conservative, but not particularly partisan. Our schools are in trouble and we're shooting the messenger. You might be surprised to learn that most conservatives, just like liberals, send their kids to Universities and pay a lot of money each year to do it. Anyway, as for a research focus, I think there's disagreement on the conservative side over that issue. I think what most concerns them is waste (not actually getting research despite spending so much money on it) and ideological capture. When University leadership all shares the same political beliefs they will sometimes use the research money they're given to fund very political projects. I think it's entirely rational to want to stop funding a project which seeks to undermine everything you believe in. A solution would be to refocus on real research and seek ideological diversity.