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Johns Hopkins University slashes 2k jobs
- virgildotcodes 2y ago[flagged]
- dh2022 2y agoAnd I hope, oh how I hope, that the positions eliminated in the US are administrative positions. That researchers, teaching assistants, lab technicians will keep their jobs.
- madiator 2y agoThat's the hope, but that's never how things go. Of course researchers and research will be tremendously affected, and that's a shame.
- SoftTalker 2y agoThere are a lot of administrative staff at research universities whose jobs support... research. Is there bloat and are there too many managers/VPs? Probably somewhat, but the more of the grant administration work that gets pushed back down to PIs and research groups, the less time they have for research. They will also make many mistakes in both grant applications and how they spend the money, because the regulations are byzantine. That will jeopardize future funding and possibly get them penalized.
- cryptonector 2y agoTough. Researchers will have to get good at it.
- fisherjeff 2y agoYes, and similarly to increase the efficiency of our healthcare system, I suppose doctors should have to get good at also doing their own billing, janitorial, etc.
- arcmechanica 2y agoBrilliant people should be unencumbered by admin tasks. Rare minds should be supported for the benefit of all.
- cryptonector 2y agoI've worked with a lot of brilliant people who know how to do the paperwork that they have to do, and then they do it. Don't believe me? Check out the paperwork that medical doctors have to do -- it's insane, and what these researchers are being asked to do (assuming it's admins who get laid off) is way less. Or how about software developers? We have to dot our i's and cross our t's all over the place -- design reviews, architecture reviews, code reviews, test writing, and lots of process, and then we get to maintain and debug our own code and sometimes even operate it.
- Tadpole9181 2y agoThe fact you don't think they do this shows that you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Good Lord.
- epistasis 2y agoThe cuts in funding directly and immediately cut researchers doing lab work and the funds for all the reagents and experiments. Teaching assistants are different, those are paid by the university so classes will continue. Only the science gets cut.
- lmeyerov 2y agoIf it goes down how I'm seeing it in other universities and government labs.. highly unlikely. A ratio like 1:1 or 2:1 is still horrible, and those are big numbers. Likewise, it's miserable for the people who are left. Research efficiency is plummeting due to having to do nonsense work and the funding path being murky for the next few years. Firing support staff and stopping funding paths means researchers must spend even more time to get fewer grants accepted.
- neuronexmachina 2y agoI wonder how many deaths the USAID cuts will cause in the next decade. Congrats again to everyone who voted for this.
- oldpersonintx 2y ago[dead]
- drivingmenuts 2y agoSadly, most of them don't care what happens to foreigners. Even more sadly, some of those same people are hoping for those deaths.
- readyplayernull 2y agoAnd pandemics.
- a_bonobo 2y agoLots of USAID-funded research in the US too - there are about a dozen labs researching food security that have been shut down at various US universities as part of the Feed the Future Initiative. Here's one: https://ipmnewsroom.org/trump-administration-makes-cancellation-of-innovation-lab-funding-permanent-ending-the-soybean-innovation-lab-at-the-u-of-i/ https://ipmnewsroom.org/trump-administration-makes-cancellat...
- benatkin 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jsemrau 2y agoI would expect that this exactly what the people who voted for the current government wanted. I would like to learn more what they were researching, though.
- aaron695 2y ago
- bell-cot 2y agoFull Title: Johns Hopkins University slashes 2,000 jobs after Trump administration grant cut > ... 247 domestic U.S. workers for the academic institution and another 1,975 positions outside the U.S. in 44 countries. > The job cuts impact the university's Bloomberg School of Public Health, its medical school and affiliated non-profit for international health, Jhpiego. While "John Hopkins U" gets the clicks, it sounds like this is mostly about a non-profit doing international public health stuff.
- readthenotes1 2y agoThat's $400k a worker, or over $3M per worker in the US. Not sure that adds up...
- stevenbedrick 2y agoPresumably a lot of the funds in the terminated grants were for running programs that had other direct costs beyond pure headcount… That’s the thing that isn’t being reported well, IMHO: federal grants aren’t just gifts that the government gives universities, they are contracts for universities to perform services (conducting very specific research programs with well-specified deliverables, running very specific educational activities for carefully defined populations of learners, etc.).
- ta988 2y agoIndirect costs and non-payroll costs (equipment, travel, etc)
- Brybry 2y agoGrants/contracts aren't necessarily just for one year and often the numbers are about obligations and not outlays. I don't know which specific grants were cut but here's a random example[1] of one (which is probably(?) not involved). In this example it's over multiple decades with ~$253 obligated but (assuming site accuracy) only $53 million has been outlayed. It would be nice if media reporting included detailed information though. [1] https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_UM1AI068632_7529 https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_UM1AI068632_7529
- epistasis 2y agoThe scientific research community is torn asunder right now. I have never seen moods this bad. It is weird to see one of the US's greatest strengths thrown away for little gain. Every single economic analysis of NSF and NIH research funding that I have seen has shown economic return on investment from $2.5-$10 for every dollar of science spending. Cutting off the future of science feels a lot like "saving money" by eliminating retirement savings. Sure, the money isn't going into the retirement account and now you can buy more beer, but it's just sacrificing far more future gains for a short term gain. Foolish at best, and traitorous at worst.
- monero-xmr 2y ago[flagged]
- esalman 2y agoYour example is anecdotal and does not present the whole picture.
- lmeyerov 2y agoSame but different. I've been watching someone close to me have all their direct collaborators & senior mentors in cancer research across the top national labs (NIH, the top VAs, etc) be systematically fired and/or defunded. Pure R&D cancer researchers are typically on 'annually renewing contracts': think tenure-level principal investigators, not just lab techs/coordinators/programmers. They are all, by default, fired. The remaining senior cancer researchers with partial clinical duties might stay due to clinical duty exclusions, but they are still closing their cancer R&D lab portion because they have to fire all their staff specialists, cannot pay people, and cannot hire replacements. Each PI is basically a small business that got pieced together over years, so reestablishing them and their R&D programs performed by all their staff means many man-years of cancer research going down the tubes. The fraud, waste, and inefficiency is from the people lying about this. It is pretty 1984. When they fired "powerpoint people", that meant clinical trial coordinators who, as part of coordinating cancer trials, need to convey information. They gutted teams running active cancer drug trials with sick people getting cancer drugs through them. "Oops." (And no, the "mistakes" have not been corrected".) Even when cancer research staff is externally funded by non-government sources, they're still being fired. The university hospital + R&D side is a mess as well due to frozen funds, retroactive grant cancellations, well-performing grants not being renewed, review committees not looking at new grants, and even the program directors overseeing it all being fired. Imagine if you are a small business and your customers are not allowed to pay you - how would you plan your next 12 months? The result has been a slower version of the same thing. Universities and lab heads are firing trained staff and gutting future generations of new faculty & grad students. You can see this in the hiring freezes & job offer retractions, and less obvious, when openings are more about reshuffling internal staff. The people who are less impacted are researchers essentially bought out by big pharmaceuticals to run their trials, those not performing cancer research, etc. Different people. People aren't saying things because, until they're officially fired, federal law prohibits it. Even if they want to, they are busy trying to get their cancer research staff not fired, and do not want to put targets on the backs of people relying on them. Anyways, next time you see or write nonsense like this, please remember you are being lied to about basic things like cancer research and medical care. By supporting them, you are likewise promoting harmful lies about cancer research and medical care.
- michaelhoney 2y agoThe US government has opened the top of the body politic's skull and it's hacking out chunks of the soft matter inside.
- adityaathalye 2y agoIndiscriminately hobbling your best institutions is like setting your middle-aged self up for recovery after falling off the workout wagon. I know because I'm an expert on falling off that wagon... One month off requires three or four months to just get back to the previous baseline. Three months off, and I need a year. Hopefully enough of the culture of curiosity and open-minded inventiveness stays so that they have a fighting chance of making a comeback. Otherwise, the US of A stands to experience net-brain-drain at a scale rivalling only India since Y2K to present day, and the former USSR after its heyday.
- black_13 2y ago[dead]
- whatever1 2y agoThey can always protest! Oh wait they will be stripped of their rights, thrown to jail and / or get deported.
- nneonneo 2y agoNow would be a fantastic time for governments worldwide to fund universities to hire folks away from the US. When I was on the academic job market in 2018, I had offers in both the US and Canada. Ultimately, a combination of politics and grant funding led me to choose Canada. I saw how little disregard the Rs had for science funding, and how hard it already was to get grant funding in the US. I was worried that another R administration could slash research funding, but I never imagined it would be this bad. Private companies already fund a ton of research in my area, but such funding usually comes with restrictions and demands that often conflict with the core goals of open academic research. So, NSF grants and the like are still crucial for funding basic scientific research that, while not immediately of commercial value (and thus not usually funded by private interests), often becomes commercially important years after being published. My heart goes out to all of my colleagues and connections in the US who are likely going to be impacted by cuts in the next few years. It’s going to be a really brutal few years, and I hope our community can come out of this in one piece.
- GuestFAUniverse 2y ago$800.000.000 / 2000 Positons = $400.000 / Position Wow. Even with expenses apart from income, that is a lot of money. Most companies I receive job offers from do not make so much _revenue_ per person. I not a fan of DT and EM, but boy... there seems to be an unsustainable spending issue in the US.
- oneshtein 2y agoActual salary is a fraction of that number. Science is expensive.
- GuestFAUniverse 2y agoSo are other necessary expenses. And I'm aware that most of the salary (even if that would be 100% salary) will be spend and thus be good for the economy. Nonetheless that money has to come from somewhere.
- Cassyrobert 2y ago[dead]