4 ms·

Academia is about to go through a generational reset. The system is broken and the market only tolerates broken systems for so long. There are a ton of great t

• gNucleusAI 5mo ago
  there are tons of alternative ways to get education , or do research
  • potbelly83 5mo ago
    Education yes, research unfortunately no. I'm not saying research outside of academia is not possible, I'm just saying it's not taken seriously and this needs to change. We really do need to go back to the 19th century model of the researcher gentleman.
    • kjkjadksj 5mo ago
      The researcher gentleman cannot afford their own cryo em. We aren’t doing the science of 1890 anymore.
    • cmiles8 5mo ago
      A real shock to academia is that top research increasingly takes place outside universities. On many areas universities are now 5-10 years behind what’s happening in the private sector. That’s causing a lot of panic within the system and a growing stream of departures as PhDs favor the private sector over academic tracts.
      • marcosdumay 5mo ago
        That is how it should be, and how it has historically been. There has been an unsustainable inflation of academic research on the last 150 years or so after governments decided to formalize research. But the thing about unsustainable stuff is that they always end. The institutions that teach researchers also doing the majority of it necessarily turn into a Ponzi scheme.
      • nukedindia 5mo ago
        [dead]
      • waterheater 5mo ago
        A few years ago, when I was actively involved with the academic world, I came to a similar realization. They're trying to do too many things at once. Universities need to acknowledge this reality and adjust. After thinking about it, I came up with a straightforward solution (at least in STEM): offer more than one type of of doctoral degree. Every program will have at least two doctoral programs: a Doctor of Philosophy, and a Doctor of Science/Engineering/Mathematics/etc. The Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) program is academia at its core, where the students in this doctoral program are explicitly seeking an academic teaching or research position as their career path. The coursework and educational activities are explicitly aligned for this area. The Doctor of Science/Engineering/Mathematics is focused on creating a top-of-the-line researcher intended for industry or an FFRDC. Those students receive a different type of education which explicitly gives them the deeper research skills and connections needed to become an accomplished industry researcher. The two programs are equally rigorous but have different end goals in mind. This specialization is overdue, and most departments already have a fuzzy line separating the "academics" from the "practitioners."
        • kmicinski 5mo ago
          This just kind of sounds like a random idea that sounds good in your head but not based in reality; the point of a PhD has always been one thing, and one thing alone: train someone who can publish influential papers in top-tier venues. Anyone who says otherwise is just either uninformed or selling a dream.
    • bregma 5mo ago
      I dunno. The single major qualification of being from money has not always made for the best research results.
    • GenerocUsername 5mo ago
      YouTube and Patreon have done wonders for rebooting the modern research gentleman field. I follow a dozen YouTubers doing extremely niche, cutting edge, science. It is progressing beyond 'backyard science'.
      • JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
        > a dozen YouTubers doing extremely niche, cutting edge, science Evidence of something that's been impactful?
      • pbhjpbhj 5mo ago
        Care to share any that people here might like to follow?
    • layer8 5mo ago
      Research is usually a collaborative effort nowadays. You’d need a League of Research Gentlemen. Not to mention that an important number of research fields require expensive research labs/equipment.
• andrepd 5mo ago
  This is about research, science research in particular. "Preparing for the workforce" is not the point here (and arguably should not really be the point of education in general, but much can be said about that...). You speak of "market" and "cost-value" and economic darwinism. You seem to be confused: many things do not work based on next-quarter revenue optimisation, fundamental science research being one of them.
  • JimBlackwood 5mo ago
    > This is about research, science research in particular. "Preparing for the workforce" is not the point here (and arguably should not really be the point of education in general, but much can be said about that...). This is a bit short sighted. Not all university studies are for fundamental science (law, for instance). Some university studies need to work together with industry (again, law. or some physics studies). Next to that, even for studies that do fundamental research (mathematics), a lot of people attend university for it’s job prospects. For instance, if you want to become an actuary - having done mathematics as a degree will help. My point being, a large part of university studies and their students are there to “Prepare for the workforce”. I don’t think you can do without that. Fundamental research is not some fantasy world that can do without industry or other things developed by the outside world.
    • biophysboy 5mo ago
      Departments base grad school admissions on grant awards. The article states: grant awards for MIT went down more than 20%, then new MIT grad students went down 20%. The decrease in students has nothing to do with academia being detached from industry.
    • JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
      > Not all university studies are for fundamental science (law, for instance) MIT doesn't have a law school. MIT cutting grad spots means national research priorities being compromised.
    • SauntSolaire 5mo ago
• finolex1 5mo ago
  Not really relevant to this article, which is about graduate students in research programs, who get a stipend and don't pay anything. Of course, low stipends are also a big detractor for potential students
• kenferry 5mo ago
  Ok, but not what this article is about at all. Six figures is for undergrads. The issue here is that PIs don’t have the money to support graduate students, who are typically fully supported.
  • cmiles8 5mo ago
    Same issue with grad school… the value isn’t there for this to make sense. Folks are better off just going right into them private sector.
    • magicalist 5mo ago
      The value absolutely is there. The NSF and NIH were both very cheap and have had huge ROI. The cuts to academic funding have been monumentally stupid.
      • coffeemug 5mo ago
        Brass tacks, if an institution has an overwhelming political leaning toward faction X and works to undermine faction Y, is it really surprising that when Y gets into power it attempts to damage the institution? This is precisely why publicly funded institutions should maintain agnostic political posture.
        • shimman 5mo ago
          What fantasy world do you live in? I want to be there, the world I'm everything granted to the public is always under constant attack and threatened to be destroyed and their proponents destroy and their benefactors humiliated.
        • pastel8739 5mo ago
          How do you do this when belief in science, which is important to academic institutions, is unpopular with one faction?
          • 5mo ago
• MSFT_Edging 5mo ago
  > bringing the cost-value equation back to a defensible reality. I firmly believe looking at academia through this lens is part of the reason why it has been so firmly exploited as a business. To treat the school as a business in partnership with corporation treats the student as the customer and product. Like everything in our time, the push for profit leads to optimization and enshitification. The student experience, student outcome, and quality of academia have all been sent through the enshitification wringer. We can point to the lowering in quality of research to this, the reliance on poorly paid grad students, which end up producing worse work, worse research, and less effect on industry. I firmly believe there needs to be a degree of separation between academia and corporate interests. To optimize for profit finds local maxima and limits the ability of academia to do real research.
• mohamedkoubaa 5mo ago
  It's simple. The US used to be the most desirable place for immigrants and the US higher education system used to be the envy of the world and now for both of these it is not any more. A reset was always inevitable.
  • deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
  • dyauspitr 5mo ago
    I don’t know what you’re talking about but both of those are definitely still true. It’s just that this administration is trying to stop the first from happening.
    • malcolmgreaves 5mo ago
      And the second.
  • tevon 5mo ago
    We used to build great big crazy things too, lots via research universities due to vast federal and defense research. That has changed. It should be reinstated. Cut red tape, get back into the business of taking (literal) moonshots as a government.
  • kmicinski 5mo ago
    > The US used to be the most desirable place for immigrants and the US higher education system used to be the envy of the world and now for both of these it is not any more. That is a nice sound bite for TV--the reality is that the government has been systematically rejecting visas in a bid to kill universities. Yes, it's true that universities counted too much on rich MS students and the like. But the reason for the failures isn't that "it is not any more," as you say--it's a very calculated move by the current administration to eat universities' bottom line.
  • pastel8739 5mo ago
    When do you believe that changed?
• sysreq_ 5mo ago
  My favorite idea is to tie student loans and grants not to the individual per say, but rather their choice of institution and study. For example, a student going to MIT for a hard, well-paying science career should be able to access more capital at a better rate than someone attending a party school to major in a lower-paying humanities field. Some have taken the current state of things to imply a failure of capitalism - when in fact what we are seeing is a distortion by non-capitalist principals. When you subsidize without regard for investment risk you skew the incentive structure. As it stands the optimum result is generated by maximizing enrollment and changing whatever additional sum a student can pay on top of what the government provides. Since it doesn't matter what they major in, or what the institutional quality is, the market adapts accordingly. By attaching student loan quantities and qualities to both the major and institution, we ensure equal access to the individual but leave market incentives to ensure quality. The break down in academic quality and corresponding labor market corrections is entirely predicated on institutional optimization through misalignments in subsidization. You can still make the system fair to individuals from non-traditional backgrounds without making it equal. I would argue that you can even do more to increase equitability to historically marginalized groups once you decouple from the 'flat rate' approach. The system is broken because we broke it. The solution is not to continue down the path of misaligned incentives but rather make sure the incentives are properly considered.
  • tevon 5mo ago
    This has been tried multiple times actually via ISAs and other instruments. Immediately inverts to adverse selection - eg the students who are going for a more lucrative option don't want to participate. That said, the letter here wasn't about undergrad or expensive college - its about the federal government stripping funding for research for political reasons. Sad. We should be investing in US research capabilities. And like it or not, our research universities are pretty freaking good at... research.
• shantnutiwari 5mo ago
  >> The system is broken and the market only tolerates broken systems for so long. People were talking about housing market being overheated (Financial Times, UK's finance minister etc) since, yet it carried on for 8 years before it exploded. Markets can stay insane for years, if not decades