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He is already an elected representative in the French parliament, being part of the current government's majority. His political party and the government have a

by p4bl0 7y ago

He is already an elected representative in the French parliament, being part of the current government's majority. His political party and the government have already passed several laws that are very damaging to research and higher education (among other things, but these two topics Villani actually knows something about, and he should care a bit given his background). He has never said anything publicly about it, or only to support the government. I see this behavior as proof that he doesn't care at all about being a mathematician (well, except when it gives him credit he doesn't deserve), so he should just be considered another random politician, and he's not even a good one. Edit: fixed "dommageable".

onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
"dommageable" is "damaging", for anyone who couldn't guess. Can you go into detail about what his party has voted for that's so bad for higher education and research? I consider myself pretty academia-friendly, and there's a lot of things I'd vote for that most people would consider damaging to higher education and research. For example, I think free college for everyone is a terrible idea. Most people consider that heresy.
- syrusakbary 7y ago
  > For example, I think free college for everyone is a terrible idea. Most people consider that heresy. A terrible idea from what perspective? I'd love to hear more! (I'm on the other side of the spectrum)
  - onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
    I'm not opposed to free college if 1) you're studying something with a proven ROI, and/or 2) you have a good academic history, and/or 3) you can't otherwise afford it. I think the idea that someone can get straight C's in highschool and get $50k a year to study art in college is not a good use of my tax dollars. I also don't think it's a good idea to give someone like me a free college education. I make $400k a year. I can pay for it my fucking self if I want to. The idea someone else should pay for it seems absurd. Further, some of the most expensive schools are some of the worst schools. I don't think we should be paying an unlimited amount of money for the same education. If the University of Pittsburgh can deliver results much better than USC (I'm not saying it can, this is a hypothetical) -- I don't think you should be able to get $70k a year to go to USC when you can study the same thing with better results at Pittsburgh for $20k. All that being said, I think it's a phenomenal use of my tax dollars to train someone to be a doctor or an engineer or a lawyer (etc), who's demonstrated an interest in medicine (or something relevant) and has done well in high school -- especially if that person wouldn't otherwise be able to afford going to medical school (or law school or whatever). Especially if the tuition at that school isn't excessive, and people who graduate from it actually go on to get jobs as doctors and not baristas at Starbucks. There's a lot of other things to consider as well -- is it just tuition we're covering? In Europe, most of the universities dorms and cafeterias aren't exactly 5-star hotels. Stanford's dorms can cost $2.5k per month for a swanky broom closet. I'm not sure it makes sense to pay for that. But I also think it's important to pay for room & board, because some people might really not be able to afford it, or will probably do worse in school if they have to work a full-time job to pay for room & board. I don't think it's a good investment to pay to put people in school and then set them up for failure. Additionally, I think students should have SOME Skin in the Game. If college is 100% free, I'm not sure that creates the best incentives for the students. Maybe the government should pay for 80% and give you a low-interest loan for the other 20%. And maybe the max you can get is the minimum tuition of schools in the top 5% in your field of study. And maybe you get a stipend for room & board that is reasonable. That, I think would prevent a lot of potential abuses.
    - thatfrenchguy 7y ago
      > I think the idea that someone can get straight C's in highschool and get $50k a year to study art in college is not a good use of my tax dollars. What if that person ends up being successful in that field ? Should we only have the kids of the rich do arts ? That seems to be what's going on in the US and you see the devastating cultural result. > Additionally, I think students should have SOME Skin in the Game You have skin in the game, because you need to feed yourself. The government paid for my studies, that doesn't mean I wasn't thinking "how will I have a roof over my head" afterwards. > Stanford's dorms can cost $2.5k per month for a swanky broom closet. I'm not sure it makes sense to pay for that Trust me, if they're focused on reducing costs, they won't cost 2.5k a month. French public (individual) dorms cost like 120e a month.
      - oefrha 7y ago
        > Trust me, if they're focused on reducing costs, they won't cost 2.5k a month. They don't cost 2.5k a month, and they aren't swanky broom closets. The average is ~1k, cheaper if you live with more people; this is below Palo Alto rent, mind you. I believe the Stanford dorm experience is way better than that of most American institutions. For starters, every undergrad is basically guaranteed housing for the entirety of their college education, so no one is unwillingly ejected from university housing and forced to rent elsewhere (which is more expensive, as I already pointed out). Not sure why gp decided to throw some random defamation at Stanford (might have been exaggerating to make a point, but it's not at all clear from the writing). Disclosure: Stanford alum.
        goerz 7y ago
        I’ve stayed in Stanford dorms, and they were pretty swanky (but then, so was pretty much every other dorm in the US I’ve seen)
        oefrha 7y ago
        The variance is huge among all the different dorms so there are relatively swanky ones and ones that are not so (most are in the latter category, depending what you perceive as swanky of course). But my rebuttal was more on the "broom closet" part.
- dmix 7y ago
  > I think free college for everyone is a terrible idea. Most people consider that heresy. Twitter is not a great reflection of real popularity. I highly doubt this is really that popular, especially when it comes to actually implementing and the real costs are considered. It’s far easier to be hand wavy about this stuff in political campaigns than when it comes to policy and real life implications. Especially given the highly questionable ROI we’ve seen with the large rise in people going to college and not finding work after. That plus the massive rise in tuition. This would have been way easier to pull off in the 70s than today.
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    But "popularity" is determined by people, many of whom do not consider the real costs (at least not at this time).
- p4bl0 7y ago
  First we do not agree on free education. I believe that's a good thing. Now, what Macron's government did wrong with research and higher education is: literally everything they did about it. The switch to high tuition as you said (especially given that it was only for foreigners, which I consider racist, and anyway the Conseil Constitutionnel recently found this measure unconstitutional). Parcoursup was a very bad decision: it is poorly designed, it is much worse than the previous system for university admissions for obvious algorithmic reasons that my undergrad students can spot (but that Villani apparently can't?), and it also does not solve the actual problem which is the lack of universities and professors. There is also the way they force universities to merge by making funding conditional to merger, this comes at high cost for no clear benefits (except for maybe jumping a _few_ places in the Shanghai university ranking, which is pure bullshit). There is the way they decided to fund public research: almost exclusively via calls for project, which is a very very inefficient wqy of distributing money as everyone has to work for month to make application and less than 10% of applicants are actually funded so more than 90% of all this work is done for next to nothing, and in addition to that the money is very badly distributed with very rich man that have so much money they don't even know how to spend it and a majority of labs where it becomes difficult to do any research at all. Their funding policy also force universities to cut there spending which is mostly salaries, meaning not replacing professors who retires for example, which means even less professors while there is more and more students (and that was forseeable, they all were born around two decades ago and have been through primary and middle and high school, we saw them coming). I could continue but I'm on my mobile phone so I will stop there.
  - xwolfi 7y ago
    Foreigners aren't a "race", what are you saying. The proper definition of foreigner in this context is: never paid any taxes and most likely will not later. If foreigners in China, Chile or Uganda start paying french taxes, I'll follow you. On raising in the Shanghai index, it's bullshit only if you don't want to compete. Sure the metrics can be discussed but the impact of the low rank is very much here: top researchers abroad won't even hear about french labs and won't feel it will further their career compared to a serious university in the middle of Japan who invested to fit the metric. Another thing that I always feel when I hear those grumpy french rambles is that it's absolute, as if time didnt change things and situations were eternal. What's wrong with adapting and trying and reverting if it doesnt work then try something else ? Doing nothing or whining at every attempt to solve a problem will just lead to...nothing.
- chapium 7y ago
  I've learned that guessing french words from their english sounding roots is very precarious.
  - jjgreen 7y ago
    ... so much so that they have their own name: Faux Amis
  - ttoinou 7y ago
    It's not précaire, it works most of the temps !
- baby 7y ago
  This is interesting because paid education has been pretty bad for mathematics in the US as opposed to France which sees a continuous stream of brilliant and successful mathematicians.
  - omaranto 7y ago
    There is also a continuous stream of brilliant and successful American mathematicians!
    - justAlittleCom 7y ago
      Where did they study ? (real question here, because USA is really good at attracting brilliant people from everywhere).
      - omaranto 7y ago
        Well, as you might expect, many successful American mathematicians studied at top American universities such as Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Chicago, Michigan, etc. (Not sure if your were expecting a significantly different answer.)
        devnulloverflow 7y ago
        It's a pretty common pattern for brilliant people to do a PhD in the Ivy league while having done undergrad in some other country entirely. Not sure if that is less or more common than having done undergrad at an Ivy and/or some other US university.
        baby 7y ago
        To add to this, foreign students coming to do math in the US have a huge advance compared to other students (due to their educating system being more advanced), and are thus prone to continue over achieving.
  - 7y ago
tasogare 7y ago
Very well said. He is part of the clique that made a hold-up on the last presidential election. Most of these people are opportunists who smelt the wind but don't care about addressing the real issues of the country that make master-level people emigrate instead of staying at home. They maintain the statu here and there, liberalise companies and deregulate few sectors as gift to friends, speak empty words all the time ("values of our Republic", "democracy", etc.) while not giving a shit about any professionals (nurses, police, firemen) that rightfully manifest their fedupness. They are perfectly grooming the "populism" they despite.
mytailorisrich 7y ago
Trying to get foreign students (outside of EU) to pay tuition fees in university is not damaging to anything. On the contrary, it is flabbergasting that they get free tuition at the moment. Of course the issue is that free tuition has just been ruled to be a constitutional requirement and changing the constitution is a big hurdle.
- theobeers 7y ago
  We can think about this in a more nuanced way. The language of instruction, for example, is an important consideration. If foreign students are going to pursue degrees in France, in programs where the coursework is exclusively or primarily in French, then why not offer them the normal tuition-free deal? It would benefit French culture and France’s economy, while also respecting the fact that most of the students in question would come from former colonies. English-language degree programs (thinking of other European countries) are a different story. There you end up with a situation that is more parasitic or exploitative.
  - mytailorisrich 7y ago
    How much would these students be willing to pay? How much does it cost the university to provide the tuition? I'm in the UK. Universities charge £10k+ a year to foreign students (US, Australia, etc do the same) and they have queues of them waiting to sign up. There are plenty of foreign students willing to pay thousands of euros a year and it is madness for France to subsidise them, then complain that universities lack resources. Nothing prevents some of the money from being used to provide scholarships to bright foreign students who couldn't otherwise afford it. This needs to be looked at with pragmatism. The position that tuition has to be free is ideological, not pragmatical.
hoseja 7y ago
Reminds me of Merkel, the nuclear physicist.
- goerz 7y ago
  Quantum chemist. Quite different from nuclear physics.
_fizz_buzz_ 7y ago
I don't like your comment for several reasons> 1.) You don't provide any example how he damaged academia. It lacks substance. 2.) "he doesn't care at all about being a mathematician (well, except when it gives him credit he doesn't deserve)" That bit of character assassination is unnecessary. He is obviously one of the most accomplished Mathematicians alive.
- p4bl0 7y ago
  1) You're right, sorry. Substance in followup comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21404314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21404314 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21406475 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21406475 2) The fact that he is one of the most accomplished mathematicians alive does not contradict the fact that it doesn't have anything to do with him doing politics, and that he doesn't do politics the way we could expect a member of academia would. That's what I meant: since he does not seem interested in research and higher education as a politician, it doesn't really count, on the politics side, that he is a member of academia.
  - p4bl0 7y ago
    About Parcoursup, more substance: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21409203 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21409203 The fact that Villani did not say anything about it and even supported the change says a lot of things on how he is now a politician and his mathematical background does not count anymore. I don't know of a single person with basic knowledge of algorithm who wouldn't be horrified by the design decisions in Parcoursup.
yodsanklai 7y ago
I think it's unfair to blame him for everything his political party does. If you want to be in a place where you can make a difference, you need to go along with certain decisions you may disagree with.
- p4bl0 7y ago
  He has not disagreed with a single thing. The only difference he wants to make is to have his political career on track.

by p4bl0 7y ago

onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago

"dommageable" is "damaging", for anyone who couldn't guess. Can you go into detail about what his party has voted for that's so bad for higher education and research? I consider myself pretty academia-friendly, and there's a lot of things I'd vote for that most people would consider damaging to higher education and research. For example, I think free college for everyone is a terrible idea. Most people consider that heresy.

syrusakbary 7y ago
> For example, I think free college for everyone is a terrible idea. Most people consider that heresy. A terrible idea from what perspective? I'd love to hear more! (I'm on the other side of the spectrum)
- onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
  I'm not opposed to free college if 1) you're studying something with a proven ROI, and/or 2) you have a good academic history, and/or 3) you can't otherwise afford it. I think the idea that someone can get straight C's in highschool and get $50k a year to study art in college is not a good use of my tax dollars. I also don't think it's a good idea to give someone like me a free college education. I make $400k a year. I can pay for it my fucking self if I want to. The idea someone else should pay for it seems absurd. Further, some of the most expensive schools are some of the worst schools. I don't think we should be paying an unlimited amount of money for the same education. If the University of Pittsburgh can deliver results much better than USC (I'm not saying it can, this is a hypothetical) -- I don't think you should be able to get $70k a year to go to USC when you can study the same thing with better results at Pittsburgh for $20k. All that being said, I think it's a phenomenal use of my tax dollars to train someone to be a doctor or an engineer or a lawyer (etc), who's demonstrated an interest in medicine (or something relevant) and has done well in high school -- especially if that person wouldn't otherwise be able to afford going to medical school (or law school or whatever). Especially if the tuition at that school isn't excessive, and people who graduate from it actually go on to get jobs as doctors and not baristas at Starbucks. There's a lot of other things to consider as well -- is it just tuition we're covering? In Europe, most of the universities dorms and cafeterias aren't exactly 5-star hotels. Stanford's dorms can cost $2.5k per month for a swanky broom closet. I'm not sure it makes sense to pay for that. But I also think it's important to pay for room & board, because some people might really not be able to afford it, or will probably do worse in school if they have to work a full-time job to pay for room & board. I don't think it's a good investment to pay to put people in school and then set them up for failure. Additionally, I think students should have SOME Skin in the Game. If college is 100% free, I'm not sure that creates the best incentives for the students. Maybe the government should pay for 80% and give you a low-interest loan for the other 20%. And maybe the max you can get is the minimum tuition of schools in the top 5% in your field of study. And maybe you get a stipend for room & board that is reasonable. That, I think would prevent a lot of potential abuses.
  - thatfrenchguy 7y ago
    > I think the idea that someone can get straight C's in highschool and get $50k a year to study art in college is not a good use of my tax dollars. What if that person ends up being successful in that field ? Should we only have the kids of the rich do arts ? That seems to be what's going on in the US and you see the devastating cultural result. > Additionally, I think students should have SOME Skin in the Game You have skin in the game, because you need to feed yourself. The government paid for my studies, that doesn't mean I wasn't thinking "how will I have a roof over my head" afterwards. > Stanford's dorms can cost $2.5k per month for a swanky broom closet. I'm not sure it makes sense to pay for that Trust me, if they're focused on reducing costs, they won't cost 2.5k a month. French public (individual) dorms cost like 120e a month.
    - oefrha 7y ago
      > Trust me, if they're focused on reducing costs, they won't cost 2.5k a month. They don't cost 2.5k a month, and they aren't swanky broom closets. The average is ~1k, cheaper if you live with more people; this is below Palo Alto rent, mind you. I believe the Stanford dorm experience is way better than that of most American institutions. For starters, every undergrad is basically guaranteed housing for the entirety of their college education, so no one is unwillingly ejected from university housing and forced to rent elsewhere (which is more expensive, as I already pointed out). Not sure why gp decided to throw some random defamation at Stanford (might have been exaggerating to make a point, but it's not at all clear from the writing). Disclosure: Stanford alum.
      - goerz 7y ago
        I’ve stayed in Stanford dorms, and they were pretty swanky (but then, so was pretty much every other dorm in the US I’ve seen)
        oefrha 7y ago
        The variance is huge among all the different dorms so there are relatively swanky ones and ones that are not so (most are in the latter category, depending what you perceive as swanky of course). But my rebuttal was more on the "broom closet" part.
dmix 7y ago
> I think free college for everyone is a terrible idea. Most people consider that heresy. Twitter is not a great reflection of real popularity. I highly doubt this is really that popular, especially when it comes to actually implementing and the real costs are considered. It’s far easier to be hand wavy about this stuff in political campaigns than when it comes to policy and real life implications. Especially given the highly questionable ROI we’ve seen with the large rise in people going to college and not finding work after. That plus the massive rise in tuition. This would have been way easier to pull off in the 70s than today.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  But "popularity" is determined by people, many of whom do not consider the real costs (at least not at this time).
p4bl0 7y ago
First we do not agree on free education. I believe that's a good thing. Now, what Macron's government did wrong with research and higher education is: literally everything they did about it. The switch to high tuition as you said (especially given that it was only for foreigners, which I consider racist, and anyway the Conseil Constitutionnel recently found this measure unconstitutional). Parcoursup was a very bad decision: it is poorly designed, it is much worse than the previous system for university admissions for obvious algorithmic reasons that my undergrad students can spot (but that Villani apparently can't?), and it also does not solve the actual problem which is the lack of universities and professors. There is also the way they force universities to merge by making funding conditional to merger, this comes at high cost for no clear benefits (except for maybe jumping a _few_ places in the Shanghai university ranking, which is pure bullshit). There is the way they decided to fund public research: almost exclusively via calls for project, which is a very very inefficient wqy of distributing money as everyone has to work for month to make application and less than 10% of applicants are actually funded so more than 90% of all this work is done for next to nothing, and in addition to that the money is very badly distributed with very rich man that have so much money they don't even know how to spend it and a majority of labs where it becomes difficult to do any research at all. Their funding policy also force universities to cut there spending which is mostly salaries, meaning not replacing professors who retires for example, which means even less professors while there is more and more students (and that was forseeable, they all were born around two decades ago and have been through primary and middle and high school, we saw them coming). I could continue but I'm on my mobile phone so I will stop there.
- xwolfi 7y ago
  Foreigners aren't a "race", what are you saying. The proper definition of foreigner in this context is: never paid any taxes and most likely will not later. If foreigners in China, Chile or Uganda start paying french taxes, I'll follow you. On raising in the Shanghai index, it's bullshit only if you don't want to compete. Sure the metrics can be discussed but the impact of the low rank is very much here: top researchers abroad won't even hear about french labs and won't feel it will further their career compared to a serious university in the middle of Japan who invested to fit the metric. Another thing that I always feel when I hear those grumpy french rambles is that it's absolute, as if time didnt change things and situations were eternal. What's wrong with adapting and trying and reverting if it doesnt work then try something else ? Doing nothing or whining at every attempt to solve a problem will just lead to...nothing.
chapium 7y ago
I've learned that guessing french words from their english sounding roots is very precarious.
- jjgreen 7y ago
  ... so much so that they have their own name: Faux Amis
- ttoinou 7y ago
  It's not précaire, it works most of the temps !
baby 7y ago
This is interesting because paid education has been pretty bad for mathematics in the US as opposed to France which sees a continuous stream of brilliant and successful mathematicians.
- omaranto 7y ago
  There is also a continuous stream of brilliant and successful American mathematicians!
  - justAlittleCom 7y ago
    Where did they study ? (real question here, because USA is really good at attracting brilliant people from everywhere).
    - omaranto 7y ago
      Well, as you might expect, many successful American mathematicians studied at top American universities such as Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Chicago, Michigan, etc. (Not sure if your were expecting a significantly different answer.)
      - devnulloverflow 7y ago
        It's a pretty common pattern for brilliant people to do a PhD in the Ivy league while having done undergrad in some other country entirely. Not sure if that is less or more common than having done undergrad at an Ivy and/or some other US university.
        baby 7y ago
        To add to this, foreign students coming to do math in the US have a huge advance compared to other students (due to their educating system being more advanced), and are thus prone to continue over achieving.
- 7y ago

tasogare 7y ago

Very well said. He is part of the clique that made a hold-up on the last presidential election. Most of these people are opportunists who smelt the wind but don't care about addressing the real issues of the country that make master-level people emigrate instead of staying at home. They maintain the statu here and there, liberalise companies and deregulate few sectors as gift to friends, speak empty words all the time ("values of our Republic", "democracy", etc.) while not giving a shit about any professionals (nurses, police, firemen) that rightfully manifest their fedupness. They are perfectly grooming the "populism" they despite.

mytailorisrich 7y ago

Trying to get foreign students (outside of EU) to pay tuition fees in university is not damaging to anything. On the contrary, it is flabbergasting that they get free tuition at the moment. Of course the issue is that free tuition has just been ruled to be a constitutional requirement and changing the constitution is a big hurdle.

theobeers 7y ago
We can think about this in a more nuanced way. The language of instruction, for example, is an important consideration. If foreign students are going to pursue degrees in France, in programs where the coursework is exclusively or primarily in French, then why not offer them the normal tuition-free deal? It would benefit French culture and France’s economy, while also respecting the fact that most of the students in question would come from former colonies. English-language degree programs (thinking of other European countries) are a different story. There you end up with a situation that is more parasitic or exploitative.
- mytailorisrich 7y ago
  How much would these students be willing to pay? How much does it cost the university to provide the tuition? I'm in the UK. Universities charge £10k+ a year to foreign students (US, Australia, etc do the same) and they have queues of them waiting to sign up. There are plenty of foreign students willing to pay thousands of euros a year and it is madness for France to subsidise them, then complain that universities lack resources. Nothing prevents some of the money from being used to provide scholarships to bright foreign students who couldn't otherwise afford it. This needs to be looked at with pragmatism. The position that tuition has to be free is ideological, not pragmatical.

hoseja 7y ago

Reminds me of Merkel, the nuclear physicist.

goerz 7y ago
Quantum chemist. Quite different from nuclear physics.

_fizz_buzz_ 7y ago

I don't like your comment for several reasons> 1.) You don't provide any example how he damaged academia. It lacks substance. 2.) "he doesn't care at all about being a mathematician (well, except when it gives him credit he doesn't deserve)" That bit of character assassination is unnecessary. He is obviously one of the most accomplished Mathematicians alive.

p4bl0 7y ago
1) You're right, sorry. Substance in followup comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21404314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21404314 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21406475 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21406475 2) The fact that he is one of the most accomplished mathematicians alive does not contradict the fact that it doesn't have anything to do with him doing politics, and that he doesn't do politics the way we could expect a member of academia would. That's what I meant: since he does not seem interested in research and higher education as a politician, it doesn't really count, on the politics side, that he is a member of academia.
- p4bl0 7y ago
  About Parcoursup, more substance: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21409203 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21409203 The fact that Villani did not say anything about it and even supported the change says a lot of things on how he is now a politician and his mathematical background does not count anymore. I don't know of a single person with basic knowledge of algorithm who wouldn't be horrified by the design decisions in Parcoursup.

yodsanklai 7y ago

I think it's unfair to blame him for everything his political party does. If you want to be in a place where you can make a difference, you need to go along with certain decisions you may disagree with.

p4bl0 7y ago
He has not disagreed with a single thing. The only difference he wants to make is to have his political career on track.