The biggest motivation IMO is just punishing universities. The first move cutting overhead costs made this pretty clear to me. It was a shrewd move: if you squi

The biggest motivation IMO is just punishing universities. The first move cutting overhead costs made this pretty clear to me. It was a shrewd move: if you squint, and use no critical thinking, you could be convinced they’ll still fund science all the same but are forcing university bureaucracies to be more “efficient”. In practice it’s just a massive cut to research universities, cause they’re viewed as enemies of the current ascendant right. The other thing, IMO, is that it’s admitting we have no longer have any aspiration to technical innovation. If the tech oligarchs actually depended on hiring “the best and brightest,” they’ve be fighting this tooth and nail. Instead, they’re perfectly happy to destroy the education pipeline because they no longer need to make good products. They’ve attained monopoly status: all they need are lobbyists and a good legal team, the quality of their product is irrelevant. (The only spot where they still seem to be competing is “AI”).