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How does Texas's research output affect its ability to pull in top professionals from elsewhere ? The mid-west has amazing public STEM schools in UMich, Wisc,

by screye 4y ago

How does Texas's research output affect its ability to pull in top professionals from elsewhere ? The mid-west has amazing public STEM schools in UMich, Wisc, UIUC, Purdue....and yet their economic centers are in free fall. On the other hand, none of Texas's top cities had a top public school (Houston, Dallas, San Antonio) and they got by just fine. Austin's rise fairly recent. If anything, the sad state of local economies near massive flagship universities like UMass, Penn State, UFl, TA&MU shows that top-graduates clearly do not care about "sticking around" near their university, and instead just work at whatever the actual economic center is. Waterloo is one of the top tech schools of the world thanks to a well run co-op program, and their professors have little to do with it. Top universities are amazing thanks to getting the best students and amazing undergrad teachers, who often tend to be PhD students or lecturers. Neither have tenure, so I'm not too worried about their ability to keep the momentum going. Hell, I'm not even sure that the research output itself will drop. It's not like the total funding for universities went down. We might even see $$ go towards more competitive areas, and a further increase in productive output.

seanmcdirmid 4y ago
Austin is Texas's fastest growing city (and in the USA), and the metro is known as one of its richest. UTA has some role in fostering a tech scene that isn't as nice in Dallas or Houston (and doesn't really exist yet in San Antonio). Seattle definitely benefits a lot from UW and its computer science department, but there is some cycle going on (Intel and Microsoft were heavy backers of UW CSE in the earlier years, and also took many of its graduates). People do care about sticking around if they can. If the school is somewhere nice; e.g. in the Bay Area, Seattle, or Austin.
nostrademons 4y ago
There's a flywheel effect to academic research where good professors -> interesting discoveries -> grad students spin out and start companies -> economic growth -> good jobs -> halo effect for university -> more students, more budget -> better professors. That's how Stanford, MIT, and Harvard got to be so dominant. They spawned a whole ecosystem of startups and tech companies around them. "Good professors" is a necessary but not sufficient condition to getting this flywheel going. You also need public/private partnerships to commercialize discoveries; a reasonably attractive urban area that'll keep students there; availability of venture capital; and a fair bit of luck with the initial batch of startups. But if you don't have decent teaching & research programs you're taking yourself out of the running entirely.

by screye 4y ago

seanmcdirmid 4y ago

Austin is Texas's fastest growing city (and in the USA), and the metro is known as one of its richest. UTA has some role in fostering a tech scene that isn't as nice in Dallas or Houston (and doesn't really exist yet in San Antonio). Seattle definitely benefits a lot from UW and its computer science department, but there is some cycle going on (Intel and Microsoft were heavy backers of UW CSE in the earlier years, and also took many of its graduates). People do care about sticking around if they can. If the school is somewhere nice; e.g. in the Bay Area, Seattle, or Austin.

nostrademons 4y ago

There's a flywheel effect to academic research where good professors -> interesting discoveries -> grad students spin out and start companies -> economic growth -> good jobs -> halo effect for university -> more students, more budget -> better professors. That's how Stanford, MIT, and Harvard got to be so dominant. They spawned a whole ecosystem of startups and tech companies around them. "Good professors" is a necessary but not sufficient condition to getting this flywheel going. You also need public/private partnerships to commercialize discoveries; a reasonably attractive urban area that'll keep students there; availability of venture capital; and a fair bit of luck with the initial batch of startups. But if you don't have decent teaching & research programs you're taking yourself out of the running entirely.