4 ms·

Whenever I hear a critique of the US academy I'm reminded of Rodney Dangerfield and Sam Kinison's bit in Back to School: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeeL-U7

by 0xWTF 1y ago

Whenever I hear a critique of the US academy I'm reminded of Rodney Dangerfield and Sam Kinison's bit in Back to School: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeeL-U7cbpE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeeL-U7cbpE Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've read (I believe on this very forum though I can't find the link, but also see 1, 2, and 3) that the European universities are often closely aligned with local industries. A challenge here in the US: outside Silicon Valley, what are the manufacturing industries in the US cities with universities? What are the major industries in Kansas City? Are those companies funding research at UMKC? What are the major industries in Dallas? Are those companies funding research at Southwestern? Ronny Chieng actually breaks down the larger problem quite nicely: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/i1Hi_hacvN4 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/i1Hi_hacvN4 So now we do in fact have an incredible university system supported in part by a mess of underskilled labor in fly-over states that dropped out of college after saddling themselves with significant educational debt. Wildly, the one industry that is a major economic driver in most cities is healthcare, which is a pretty dead-end industry in terms of economic output, that is, outside of certain world-reknowned institutions like the Mayo Clinic, healthcare doesn't really generate a significant exportable commodity. (1) https://education.ec.europa.eu/education-levels/higher-education/innovation-in-education/university-business-cooperation https://education.ec.europa.eu/education-levels/higher-educa... (2) https://www.jstor.org/stable/24118541 https://www.jstor.org/stable/24118541 (3) https://sciencebusiness.net/news/universities/deepening-collaboration-between-academia-and-industry https://sciencebusiness.net/news/universities/deepening-coll...

pyuser583 1y ago
America is mostly a service based economy. Same with Silicon Valley. I don’t think anything is manufactured there. All this is to be expected in a service based economy.
- 0xWTF 1y ago
  SV only started looking like a service-based economy, from a taxation perspective, after IRC section 174 changes came into effect.
- Tadpole9181 1y ago
  America is one of the largest manufacturers in the world. Literally second only behind China. Something like 18% of global manufacturing exports (in USD). I feel like people forget this sometimes. We're in a tight spot and should reverse course in many ways, but we aren't these helpless little babies that do nothing but serve food and write software. Maybe because it's very convenient to the rhetoric one side of the aisle uses.
ryathal 1y ago
While most the manufacturing work has left the US, the Midwest is full of engineering universities. It's not a coincidence that the big 3 auto companies were based in Detroit and Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania are full of top engineering colleges. There's still lots of nameless firms there designing all sorts of things that are manufactured across the globe, but they don't have the employee count to be massive drivers of a city's economy.

by 0xWTF 1y ago

pyuser583 1y ago

America is mostly a service based economy. Same with Silicon Valley. I don’t think anything is manufactured there. All this is to be expected in a service based economy.

0xWTF 1y ago
SV only started looking like a service-based economy, from a taxation perspective, after IRC section 174 changes came into effect.
Tadpole9181 1y ago
America is one of the largest manufacturers in the world. Literally second only behind China. Something like 18% of global manufacturing exports (in USD). I feel like people forget this sometimes. We're in a tight spot and should reverse course in many ways, but we aren't these helpless little babies that do nothing but serve food and write software. Maybe because it's very convenient to the rhetoric one side of the aisle uses.

ryathal 1y ago

While most the manufacturing work has left the US, the Midwest is full of engineering universities. It's not a coincidence that the big 3 auto companies were based in Detroit and Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania are full of top engineering colleges. There's still lots of nameless firms there designing all sorts of things that are manufactured across the globe, but they don't have the employee count to be massive drivers of a city's economy.