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I've been in industry and academia. My experience is that incentives within the two are converging: monetization drives all activities. Higher ed is allowing

I've been in industry and academia. My experience is that incentives within the two are converging: monetization drives all activities. Higher ed is allowing professors to slump teaching responsibilities - as it has for many years - in favor of high-flying research. What is new is that now: entire departments struggle to find chairs or people to run basic functions at teaching or research levels. Professors are rarely on campus except at the bare minimum and are largely diverting resources (people & research) to their companies.

nine_k 1y ago
(philosoraptor template:) Maybe paying professors more could help? Tuition is at all-times high, but apparently only 1/4 to 1/3 of this money goes to the actual teaching staff.
- almostgotcaught 1y ago
  > (philosoraptor template:) Maybe paying professors more could help? who is going to pay them more? institutions? do you think that institutions are acting against their own incentives somehow? institutions are acting on their incentives and it's producing suboptimal outcomes for society because spoiler alert the free market isn't the correct mechanism for absolutely everything in life.
  - omgJustTest 1y ago
    Generally i agree that paying more is unlikely to resolve much. Fixing the incentives might, however funding comes from very few places and they have their own incentives => lobbied goals or profit-motivated. One might argue that money is a prioritization method. I'd argue that having one metric (amount of money) makes you susceptible to single-metric problems: optimization of everything to the point of meaninglessness, critical dependence on the stability of that metric's underlying present & future value. Defects in the currently implemented financial system (exploitable by evolving technologies) might lead to larger systematic failures and less robustness.
    - araes 1y ago
      Had similar thoughts from hobby work in game development. Bit like a system where you have many game mechanics, yet most have become meaningless as the money mechanic is the only metric that actually means anything. Politics doesn't mean anything, money. Academia is starting to mean less, money. Culture is mostly, money. Health care is having serious issues, money. Military industrial is having issues, money. Even farming is having issues, money.
- omgJustTest 1y ago
  As long as the institutional incentives are monetization, it will never be enough.

nine_k 1y ago

(philosoraptor template:) Maybe paying professors more could help? Tuition is at all-times high, but apparently only 1/4 to 1/3 of this money goes to the actual teaching staff.

almostgotcaught 1y ago
> (philosoraptor template:) Maybe paying professors more could help? who is going to pay them more? institutions? do you think that institutions are acting against their own incentives somehow? institutions are acting on their incentives and it's producing suboptimal outcomes for society because spoiler alert the free market isn't the correct mechanism for absolutely everything in life.
- omgJustTest 1y ago
  Generally i agree that paying more is unlikely to resolve much. Fixing the incentives might, however funding comes from very few places and they have their own incentives => lobbied goals or profit-motivated. One might argue that money is a prioritization method. I'd argue that having one metric (amount of money) makes you susceptible to single-metric problems: optimization of everything to the point of meaninglessness, critical dependence on the stability of that metric's underlying present & future value. Defects in the currently implemented financial system (exploitable by evolving technologies) might lead to larger systematic failures and less robustness.
  - araes 1y ago
    Had similar thoughts from hobby work in game development. Bit like a system where you have many game mechanics, yet most have become meaningless as the money mechanic is the only metric that actually means anything. Politics doesn't mean anything, money. Academia is starting to mean less, money. Culture is mostly, money. Health care is having serious issues, money. Military industrial is having issues, money. Even farming is having issues, money.
omgJustTest 1y ago
As long as the institutional incentives are monetization, it will never be enough.