7 ms·

It's harder to recruit PhD students and it's harder to fund them. NSF budget was cut 55% in the first year. The administration is doing everything possible to m

by titzer 9mo ago

It's harder to recruit PhD students and it's harder to fund them. NSF budget was cut 55% in the first year. The administration is doing everything possible to make it clear that no foreigners are welcome here. America is stabbing itself directly in the brain.

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
ajzushzb 9mo ago
[dead]
guywithahat 9mo ago
> It's harder to recruit PhD students and it's harder to fund them If it’s harder to fund them then it should be easier to recruit them. I don’t think both can be true at the same time, unless you’re saying it’s harder to fund foreign PhD’s with US tax dollars in which case I think you’ll find limited sympathy for your cause.
- BeetleB 9mo ago
  > unless you’re saying it’s harder to fund foreign PhD’s with US tax dollars in which case I think you’ll find limited sympathy for your cause. As your sibling pointed out, the end result is China benefiting from that void.
- jaredklewis 9mo ago
  Maybe I’m missing something, but why can’t it be true? If I’m a PhD deciding what to do with the next few years of my life, the fact that government jobs currently seem very unstable might make PhDs hesitant to choose this path. There’s probably also at least some PhDs (given the overwhelmingly left leaning politics of grad students) that don’t want to be involved with this administration. So maybe more PhDs are going into the private sector. On the other side, budget cuts might mean that you have less money to spend on the PhDs that are interested. So it doesn’t seem inherently contradictory to me.
- bauldursdev 9mo ago
  It's not a fixed size of PhD candidates competing. A future PhD candidate may choose to not become a future PhD candidate because of changes. For example, a high school or undergraduate student might read all these articles and statistics about how funding is getting pulled and research is becoming more difficult and choose to take another path. They are no longer a competitor to be a PhD candidate, they do not bid down the prices.
- UncleMeat 9mo ago
  The NSF buys research. PhD funding is not a gift, it is payment for a job. Buying research from citizens or noncitizens is not meaningfully different.
  - pvaldes 9mo ago
    And is a hard work. USA buys also research partially finished in other countries for cents a dollar when they hire scientists. Harvesting the low hanging fruit without paying a dime for their first 25 years of education. A big percentage of their patents came from discoveries done by foreign researchers. Some of this patents were extremely lucrative for US in the past.
adev_ 9mo ago
European researcher here. There is an other thing that should make America worry. Research grants have been cut everywhere in the US. That cuts deep and terminated many scientific collaborations between USA and the EU Horizons projects in many STEMs research fields. That created a void.... and sciences is like nature: it hates void (and the lack of money...) My perception in the domain is that the resulting void is been fulfilled everywhere by new collaborations with China. Because China has the money, the infrastructures, the will to progress and a shit ton of smart engineers/PhDs. There is today 10x more conferences in China... more exchange with China... more common projects with China than 10y ago. So congratulations to the Trump team: your anti-intellectualism is actually directly fueling new technologies and research breakthroughs to the country you consider 'your enemy'.
- kevinsync 9mo ago
  You being an outside observer of my country, what do you think the mid-term (next ~decade) looks like if the US is somehow able to flush the toilet and do a complete 180 from a policy and administration perspective? I imagine even if people we need are welcomed back with open arms, they're not going to want to come. I sure wouldn't want to go back to a bar where the bouncer kicked the shit out of me! Just curious, it's hard to see things clearly from inside the carnival.
  - detritus 9mo ago
    As an outsider not in academia, your system has poisoned your well. We trusted in you to do the Right Thing, yet a significant sub-system of your culture has entirely successfully undermined your 'Checks and Balances' - a sub-system which has clearly been in action since at least the eighties. I don't know how you get rid of that. It's You. . I get that America/the West is far from perfect.
    - GuestFAUniverse 9mo ago
      Are you kidding? Currently I wouldn't dare to enter the US, while I'm sure I would be relatively safe in China. And: even before Trump the TSA had elements of despotism. All the while I never heard of Europeans being treated like shit in China -- simply the better hosts!
john_moscow 9mo ago
Unpopular opinion: there has been a steady decline of standards in the research community in the past decade or two. First reproducibility crisis. Then, some topics becoming political taboo where the unorthodox opinion would get you fired and canceled. The credibility of the science in the West has been falling, and the recent change of administration is predictably axing something that has a perceived strong bias in the opposite direction. An optimist in me hopes that we can get back to unbiased science, where it doesn't have to agree with the current side, but both sides perceive it as fair and agree to leave it alone for common good. A realist thinks that it will happen in China, and the West has just run out of steam.
- munificent 9mo ago
  > back to unbiased science Science has always struggled with biases. There was no perfect time in the past that you are imagining where that wasn't an issue. If it seems worse today, it's largely because the systemic biases that were already there are becoming more visible, which is a sign of progress.
  - briantakita 9mo ago
    When Science replaced Religion...Science took the place of Religion...
- adev_ 9mo ago
  > Then, some topics becoming political taboo where the unorthodox opinion would get you fired and canceled This is garbage. What you describe might be the case in some social-sciences circles but never has been the case in most STEMs fields. If you have a (sensical) unorthodox idea that displease a research director, 10 other research directors will be very happy to dig up this exact idea in a slightly different context. This is how sciences progress.
Hammershaft 9mo ago
The %55 budget cut is proposed, it fortunately hasn't happened yet and it might not survive congress.
- huxley 9mo ago
  You’re not wrong that it hasn’t been passed by congress but just the proposal has already led to a massive decrease in grants. I am not as optimistic that Congress would go against admin policy
- ModernMech 9mo ago
  They can cut budgets without Congress by reappropriating money now, it's one of the powers they've managed to usurp. But they don't have to cut anything, they manage to curb spending by throwing a wrench in the whole machine and watching awards crawl to a halt. They cancel grants, fire or drive out reviewers to increase review times, or delay follow-up funding. Maybe the funding comes through eventually but students need to be funded continually; the government will pull their visas if they don't have funding to enroll. They're also straight up harassing and arresting foreign students for no reason, so they don't even have to muck with the budget at all to materially ruin things.
- cyanydeez 9mo ago
  Half of the admins goals are met simply by creating uncertainty.
- yndoendo 9mo ago
  Damage has been done. I working on de-investing in the USA companies and investing in the EU. USA executive branch, legislative branch, and judicial branch are a complacent in stupidity. There is no stability in the USA and no longer rule of law.
  - water9 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    - 9mo ago
emeril 9mo ago
[flagged]
gdilla 9mo ago
plenty of tech bros voted for this.

by titzer 9mo ago

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

ajzushzb 9mo ago

[dead]

guywithahat 9mo ago

> It's harder to recruit PhD students and it's harder to fund them If it’s harder to fund them then it should be easier to recruit them. I don’t think both can be true at the same time, unless you’re saying it’s harder to fund foreign PhD’s with US tax dollars in which case I think you’ll find limited sympathy for your cause.

BeetleB 9mo ago
> unless you’re saying it’s harder to fund foreign PhD’s with US tax dollars in which case I think you’ll find limited sympathy for your cause. As your sibling pointed out, the end result is China benefiting from that void.
jaredklewis 9mo ago
Maybe I’m missing something, but why can’t it be true? If I’m a PhD deciding what to do with the next few years of my life, the fact that government jobs currently seem very unstable might make PhDs hesitant to choose this path. There’s probably also at least some PhDs (given the overwhelmingly left leaning politics of grad students) that don’t want to be involved with this administration. So maybe more PhDs are going into the private sector. On the other side, budget cuts might mean that you have less money to spend on the PhDs that are interested. So it doesn’t seem inherently contradictory to me.
bauldursdev 9mo ago
It's not a fixed size of PhD candidates competing. A future PhD candidate may choose to not become a future PhD candidate because of changes. For example, a high school or undergraduate student might read all these articles and statistics about how funding is getting pulled and research is becoming more difficult and choose to take another path. They are no longer a competitor to be a PhD candidate, they do not bid down the prices.
UncleMeat 9mo ago
The NSF buys research. PhD funding is not a gift, it is payment for a job. Buying research from citizens or noncitizens is not meaningfully different.
- pvaldes 9mo ago
  And is a hard work. USA buys also research partially finished in other countries for cents a dollar when they hire scientists. Harvesting the low hanging fruit without paying a dime for their first 25 years of education. A big percentage of their patents came from discoveries done by foreign researchers. Some of this patents were extremely lucrative for US in the past.

adev_ 9mo ago

European researcher here. There is an other thing that should make America worry. Research grants have been cut everywhere in the US. That cuts deep and terminated many scientific collaborations between USA and the EU Horizons projects in many STEMs research fields. That created a void.... and sciences is like nature: it hates void (and the lack of money...) My perception in the domain is that the resulting void is been fulfilled everywhere by new collaborations with China. Because China has the money, the infrastructures, the will to progress and a shit ton of smart engineers/PhDs. There is today 10x more conferences in China... more exchange with China... more common projects with China than 10y ago. So congratulations to the Trump team: your anti-intellectualism is actually directly fueling new technologies and research breakthroughs to the country you consider 'your enemy'.

kevinsync 9mo ago
You being an outside observer of my country, what do you think the mid-term (next ~decade) looks like if the US is somehow able to flush the toilet and do a complete 180 from a policy and administration perspective? I imagine even if people we need are welcomed back with open arms, they're not going to want to come. I sure wouldn't want to go back to a bar where the bouncer kicked the shit out of me! Just curious, it's hard to see things clearly from inside the carnival.
- detritus 9mo ago
  As an outsider not in academia, your system has poisoned your well. We trusted in you to do the Right Thing, yet a significant sub-system of your culture has entirely successfully undermined your 'Checks and Balances' - a sub-system which has clearly been in action since at least the eighties. I don't know how you get rid of that. It's You. . I get that America/the West is far from perfect.
  - GuestFAUniverse 9mo ago
    Are you kidding? Currently I wouldn't dare to enter the US, while I'm sure I would be relatively safe in China. And: even before Trump the TSA had elements of despotism. All the while I never heard of Europeans being treated like shit in China -- simply the better hosts!

john_moscow 9mo ago

Unpopular opinion: there has been a steady decline of standards in the research community in the past decade or two. First reproducibility crisis. Then, some topics becoming political taboo where the unorthodox opinion would get you fired and canceled. The credibility of the science in the West has been falling, and the recent change of administration is predictably axing something that has a perceived strong bias in the opposite direction. An optimist in me hopes that we can get back to unbiased science, where it doesn't have to agree with the current side, but both sides perceive it as fair and agree to leave it alone for common good. A realist thinks that it will happen in China, and the West has just run out of steam.

munificent 9mo ago
> back to unbiased science Science has always struggled with biases. There was no perfect time in the past that you are imagining where that wasn't an issue. If it seems worse today, it's largely because the systemic biases that were already there are becoming more visible, which is a sign of progress.
- briantakita 9mo ago
  When Science replaced Religion...Science took the place of Religion...
adev_ 9mo ago
> Then, some topics becoming political taboo where the unorthodox opinion would get you fired and canceled This is garbage. What you describe might be the case in some social-sciences circles but never has been the case in most STEMs fields. If you have a (sensical) unorthodox idea that displease a research director, 10 other research directors will be very happy to dig up this exact idea in a slightly different context. This is how sciences progress.

Hammershaft 9mo ago

The %55 budget cut is proposed, it fortunately hasn't happened yet and it might not survive congress.

huxley 9mo ago
You’re not wrong that it hasn’t been passed by congress but just the proposal has already led to a massive decrease in grants. I am not as optimistic that Congress would go against admin policy
ModernMech 9mo ago
They can cut budgets without Congress by reappropriating money now, it's one of the powers they've managed to usurp. But they don't have to cut anything, they manage to curb spending by throwing a wrench in the whole machine and watching awards crawl to a halt. They cancel grants, fire or drive out reviewers to increase review times, or delay follow-up funding. Maybe the funding comes through eventually but students need to be funded continually; the government will pull their visas if they don't have funding to enroll. They're also straight up harassing and arresting foreign students for no reason, so they don't even have to muck with the budget at all to materially ruin things.
cyanydeez 9mo ago
Half of the admins goals are met simply by creating uncertainty.
yndoendo 9mo ago
Damage has been done. I working on de-investing in the USA companies and investing in the EU. USA executive branch, legislative branch, and judicial branch are a complacent in stupidity. There is no stability in the USA and no longer rule of law.
- water9 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - 9mo ago

emeril 9mo ago

[flagged]

gdilla 9mo ago

plenty of tech bros voted for this.