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This is some long horizon impact. Really just wildly unfortunate to see a disruption that feels unique. It's not due to war, even if academics could 'flee' to a
by pempem 1y ago
This is some long horizon impact. Really just wildly unfortunate to see a disruption that feels unique. It's not due to war, even if academics could 'flee' to another institution, its a discarding of the prioritization of knowledge generation. The thing humanity has been built on.
- reactordev 1y agoIt’s more aggressive than that. It’s an intentional dismantling of higher education overall.
- gjsman-1000 1y agoHigher education pissed off half of customers in their quest for moral purity, at the same time as birth rate decline post-2008 began hitting, while raising prices +93% on average since 2008. That's not a great way to survive.
- ceejayoz 1y ago> That's not a great way to survive. Wait until you see how well setting it all on fire works.
- gjsman-1000 1y agoAt this point, we might be just fine. The academics won't be, but they were the ones telling everyone to wait on having kids in the first place. Demographic trickle down, biting the hand that feeds academia, is a big part of this story. At my college, birth control was as free as water. Teaching people to postpone marriage, children, for the sake of career, combined with record-high school debt... might be partly why academia finds themselves in this demographic decline. They told the next generation not to have kids, made it financially impossible to have kids, and lo and behold, there's less kids entering college now.
- smallmancontrov 1y agoAcademia didn't make it financially impossible to have kids. Just what control do you think academia has over the market? Over the government? "Raise house prices now or I'll send you to the principal's office!" The gays didn't send house prices to the moon. Mexicans didn't send the jobs to China. No, it's the people with assets who pursued asset-pumping policy to great effect. You're right to be angry, but you're a fool to believe them when they point at universities as the source of the problem.
- rightbyte 1y agoYou seem to argue that academia of all places made having children being a chore. Not like, dunno, job security, housing and child care costs? Whatever beef you got is what 'media' fed you selected smug academics to piss you off.
- bonsai_spool 1y ago> At this point, we might be just fine. The academics won't be, but they were the ones telling everyone to wait on having kids in the first place. Demographic trickle down, biting the hand that feeds academia, is a big part of this story. > At my college, birth control was as free as water. Teaching people to postpone marriage, children, for the sake of career, combined with record-high school debt... might be partly why academia finds themselves in this demographic decline. They told the next generation not to have kids, made it financially impossible to have kids, and lo and behold, there's less kids entering college now. Hard to tell if this is just parody. I will say that if feel that providing something equates to mandating it... I don't know how we're going to be able to have logical exchanges
- someothherguyy 1y agoI feel bad for the toxic world building you are committing yourself to. You should try not monolithizing groups of people.
- bonsai_spool 1y ago> pissed off half of customers in their quest for moral purity I'm not sure what 'half' means here. It's neither true that men make up half of applicants (which are really what we should be focusing on), nor that so-called 'conservatives' make up half of this population.
- gjsman-1000 1y ago[flagged]
- bonsai_spool 1y ago> There it is; the quest for moral purity continues. I am neither a university nor 'academia'. I am, however, still unclear about what your point is.
- hluska 1y agoIt’s funny that instead of making points or adding data, you just repeat the same slogan and act like a victim. Many of us have tried to listen for a long time but we have never found any intellectual meat on the slogans. It’s boring.
- kelipso 1y agoWhat’s there to discuss any more? There is data that some ridiculous percentage of academics are on the left, and drastically so for liberal arts departments. “Everyone knows” that they filter against conservatives (maybe there isn’t hard data, but it’s pretty obvious to a lot of people, so I would say this is something that need to be disproven, not proven). Liberals deny this, so what’s the point of discussing it. Let the dismantling continue until corrections happen I guess.
- yongjik 1y agoMembers of an ideological group that sees educational institutions as their enemies less likely to find jobs in educational institutions, news at eleven.
- smallmancontrov 1y agoAcademia didn't choose trickle-down policy. Quite the opposite -- that was you guys, after you purged all the leftist economists in the McCarthy era. In fact, the think-tank driven economics departments of recent years are so notoriously to the right of most academic faculty that this is a point of frequent conflict.
- the_sleaze_ 1y agoThis wasn't a response to any of his arguments. I am interested in what people have to say about them though. 1. DEI and identity politics prioritization 2. cost
- catlover76 1y ago[dead]
- corimaith 1y agoThis is just partisan conspirational nonsense. Modern Economics took the useful things from Marx and left the rest in the dustbin of history like it should. Nor do Economists advocate for "trickle-down" theory, the answer has more to do with where one is on the laffer curve. Economists clash frequently with other fields like social sciences because such fields continue to use unfalsifiable and highly flawed epistemic tools like dialectics to advocate for debunked theories like World Systems Theory.
- array_key_first 1y agoEconomic theory in western nations is so hilariously skewed towards free market capitalist think that obvious models are just straight up missed, or sometimes obviously wrong conclusions are drawn. Most economics start with the understanding that the answer or cause is something about free market forces, and then work backwards. For example, when talking about the economics of healthcare (or anything else, but lets start with healthcare), the conversation is approached from the get-go under the assumption that: 1. Healthcare is already a free market. 2. It is possible for healthcare to be a free market. 1. is just not true. Healthcare, in the US and and all developed nations, is not a free market. But, economists will just assume it is, because they assume everything is a free market, and then apply free market dynamics. Basically, they skip step 1, and go to step 1000. And, for number 2, it's very debatable. IMO no, healthcare cannot be a free market, just by virtue of what healthcare is as a service. But that's debatable, I won't get into it. Point is, we immediately start our economic understanding based off assumptions on top of assumptions that come from free market thinking, thinking around IP, thinking about consumer knowledge, thinking about access, etc. We make absolutely wild and unsubstantiated claims for free, and nobody checks them.
- Arainach 1y ago[flagged]
- jmugan 1y agoWhich side are you talking about?
- yongjik 1y agoAmerica's greatest conservative government pressured a private business to fire a comedian for a remark on the death of someone who was basically a celebrity troll. ...and they turn around and complain about liberals' "moral purity."
- reactordev 1y agoTo them, he was a master of manipulation, exactly what they’re looking for. Someone who can spout racism and bigotry and drive listenership based on what crazy thing he’ll say next. Where does this sound familiar? It’s playbook man. That’s their business. I don’t condone any of what happened but he’s not someone we should be building statues of.
- typicalhnbs 1y ago[dead]
- FrustratedMonky 1y agoYeah, where do people think Technology Growth comes from. GOP is all Growth, Growth, Growth, will save us, but hey lets poison the well from which it flows. All AI growth today, is actually from Academia from 20 years ago.
- nradov 1y agoGrowth comes from many sources. The supply-side economics wing of the GOP would claim that lower taxes and smaller, less intrusive government will allow for a higher private sector growth rate. There may be some truth to that, although the effects are probably limited compared to the development of disruptive new technologies.
- idiotsecant 1y agoThey would claim that, and they would be wrong. As has been repeatedly and exhaustively demonstrated.
- teddy-smith 1y agoAmen, trickle down economics is the worst meme ever created.
- rolandog 1y agoJust yesterday I was talking with some friends about the disaster that neoliberalism has been. I see billionaires as "water-balloon" (wealth) hoarders, and I see taxes on the rich as thorns on bushes. If the politicians ever wanted to make "trickle down" work, then we need thornier bushes and to make it impossible for rich people to not go through thorny bushes. But the whole deregulation craze has made it so that the billionaires don't even need people to help them protect their "water-balloons"...
- aprilthird2021 1y agoAnecdotally I have heard similar things from top tier institutions in the US as well. They are all in recession mode basically and actively cutting classes, staff, and lecturers. This all started when the govt began withholding federal funding in an attempt to clamp down on campus protests
- bonsai_spool 1y ago> This all started when the govt began withholding federal funding in an attempt to clamp down on campus protests This is definitely not why the 'govt began withholding federal funding'
- yongjik 1y agoYeah it's more like "clamp down on higher education." I've said it multiple times, Trump and his folks see higher education as the enemy, the anti-Christ that corrupts their vision of America. Protests and admin bureaucracy (give me a fucking break) are just convenient excuses.
- aprilthird2021 1y agoI guess it's the excuse, maybe not the real reason. But the cases with UCLA and Harvard is when this all changed
- bonsai_spool 1y ago> I guess it's the excuse, maybe not the real reason. But the cases with UCLA and Harvard is when this all changed That is not true. Those happened in 2024. The extortionate demands are happening in 2025. The campus protests are clearly a pretext.
- kadushka 1y agoI hope they're cutting their bloated administration departments before cutting classes and lecturers, but I'm not holding my breath.
- gbacon 1y agoThis seems like a broad overgeneralization unless you believe zero fat in grad schools is available for trimming.
- LPisGood 1y agoThe fat (insofar as it exists) is almost entirely not in mathematics PhD student funding. Compared to almost any activity a university could take, it is incredibly cheap to bring in mathematics PhD students.
- michaelt 1y agoMost phd programmes are very, very low fat when it comes to salaries. An academic CS department has to attract PhD level talent in hot areas like ML while only paying $30k a year.
- harvey9 1y agoIs there a long term financial payoff, or does it mostly attract people who are choosing academia over commercial for some other reason?
- LPisGood 1y agoA little of column A and a little of column B. There is prestige in getting a PhD. There is also access and unique networking opportunities. On the purely financial side, many top students work internships during the summers and make 40 or 50 thousand dollars during that time in addition to their academic stipend.
- aprilthird2021 1y agoIn CS there's a long term payoff bc tech has the money to invest in R&D even in an economy like this one
- array_key_first 1y agoThe payout is very, very long term and honestly you probably don't come out ahead. Starting your career 10 years earlier (effectively) and immediately progressing in your career probably gets you further. Especially if you look towards management, which is where the money is (usually, million dollar AI research salaries is a new thing).
- elevation 1y agoOddly, the actual threat to knowledge generation? Institutions that absorb societal-scale science budgets while perpetuating systemic fraud. Institutional administrators confiscate 50, 60, 70% of every research grant. Institutions demand published work even when results do not warrant it, and demote professors honest enough to document a null result. The peer review system then rubber stamps papers with no actual review or reproduction. Journals blacklist professors who withhold endorsement. The result? 90%+ of academic science is fraud. But which 90%? We need to drastically reform this system.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- searine 1y agoThis is anti-intellectual propaganda. Seriously, 90%? None of what you said is happening at anywhere near that scale. Touch grass.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- monkeyelite 1y agoProfessors have told me it doesn’t matter which administration is in - they just need to rebrand their project to meet funding requirements. Isn’t that a scary thought? We have no visibility and they are skilled enough to transform into any form.
- eli_gottlieb 1y agoNo, it's not a scary thought that physicists and chemists don't care whether a Republican or Democrat is in office.
- monkeyelite 1y agoIt’s scary that: 1. Our top researchers are wasting their time and energy promoting projects for grants. 2. Any attempt by the public to oversee or guide these grants is thwarted by smart people. 3. If you try to learn more about where the money is going or what’s being counted as science people on HN will call it “anti-intellectual propoganda”.
- boplicity 1y agoFascism is not an ideology, or a philosophical idea, it's a system of government. And dismantling and/or gaining control over academia is a core part of the system.