7 ms·

Save the Libraries. Cut University Funding Instead.

70 points by johnnybgoode 15y ago

twelvechairs 15y ago
Is it really worth comparing them so simplistically? This is a point-of-view from one side, pointing at a few flaws (of many, ignoring the positives) of universities, and a few positives (of many, ignoring the flaws) of libraries. 'Comparisons are odious' as they say....
johnnybgoode 15y ago
While this post focuses on universities and libraries, and I'm serious about preferring university cuts to library cuts, obviously there are plenty of other things that could probably be cut first.
- deleted 15y ago
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- antics 15y ago
  If there are plenty of other things to cut first, why are we comparing the two? Why not complain that they should cut something else instead of universities? I know the answer to this, and it makes me a bit sad. It's easy for Americans to resent their university system because, at least in CS, it is arguable that they don't actually need it. In some cases, it even hurts American kids. But before we all jump on this bandwagon (again) let's consider that we are perhaps being a bit myopic. In the first place, libraries are a great repository of knowledge. But knowledge does not equal production, and whether you or I or anyone else here wants to admit it, a tremendous amount of stuff has been invented, either totally, or almost totally, as a component of university research. What would the world be without transactional databases, A* search, quicksort, cryptography, the idea of programming languages and so on ad infinatum. I could probably fill up literally a whole book listing the things in CS that were invented at Universities. There are more for other fields. You might contend that they all would have been invented eventually, but the question still remains: what would the world look like if universities had not been around to foster these ideas? New ideas need friends, and Bell labs can't employ all the geniuses. I know, I know, you might contend that most research in universities is either pointless or close to pointless. Unfortunately, you'd be right. But remember, that's the Zipf curve. The ideas that are big are really, really big. Not just in universities, either: ideas produced by universities (for example, the ones I listed above) have changed the way that the world operates at a fundamental level, and they continue to do this. And when people come to universities and engage in work related to it, they carry it home, they carry it to their job, and they carry it out of the country. This is the way the world works. I know HN hates this opinion, but it is true. The other thing I want to mention is that the vast majority of these life-changing ideas come out of American universities. This is a truly global system now. People come from all over the world to study here, and when they do, they sometimes stay here. Do people come to America to study at libraries? The simple and fact of the matter is that not all talented people are born in the US, and American universities are a very important gateway to get talented people into the US. In contrast, the library system is a purely domestic product for the public that happens to be inside US. I know that you think that universities don't "help the poor", but consider that this is really only true for the domestic poor. They are an irreplaceable resource for the poor outside. I'm not pitting "our" poor against "their" poor, but it's just something to think about. The last thing I wanted to point out is that the fact that libraries are a useful repository of knowledge does not mean that it will make people productive. Universities are not good at this either, but the consistent usership of public libraries is pitifully small. The fact that they exist does not mean that people will use them, since they do exist, and people clearly mostly do not. The bottom line is this: your points all have some grain of truth to them, or they are true outright. But when you don't bother to examine why this system exists to begin with before you state that another systems should be preferred, you are undermining your own point in a huge way. In particular, to say that we should toss an incredibly important and global system for some domestic system that people don't use is utterly wrong. That all said, the correct answer is: cut neither, and instead cut part of the military.
  - johnnybgoode 15y ago
    To be perfectly clear, I'd love to cut military spending, bailouts, drug war spending, etc. This article was about a state funding issue, but I'm fine leaving that aside, since ultimately it's all government spending. In the first place, libraries are a great repository of knowledge. But knowledge does not equal production, and whether you or I or anyone else here wants to admit it, a tremendous amount of stuff has been invented, either totally, or almost totally, as a component of university research. I don't mind admitting some useful things have come out of universities. But this doesn't mean we need to continue propping up the university system as it exists today. You admit it has many flaws. There are plenty of ways to bring smart people together to learn and do research. They could be nonprofit; they could be separate from teaching or integrated with it. You could even call them "universities" if you like. But there's no reason they have to resemble the current monster. True, most research in universities is either pointless or close to pointless, but that's the Zipf curve. The ideas that are big are really, really big. Sure, but the university system isn't sold that way. We're meant to believe the research done in universities is all useful. People come from all over the world to study here, and when they do, they sometimes stay here. Do people come to America to study at libraries? Universities have special privileges when it comes to fostering immigration. If America had world-class research centers with the same privileges, people would still love to come here and they'd be able to do so. The last thing I wanted to point out is that the fact that libraries are a useful repository of knowledge does not mean that it will make people productive. Universities are not good at this either, but the consistent usership of public libraries is pitifully small. The fact that they exist does not mean that people will use them. As you point out, universities aren't very good at this. Maybe a lot of people won't use libraries, and many who do won't be very productive. But as you suggested in one of your other points, the instances that pay off really pay off. And libraries do this much more efficiently than universities, in terms of money spent. There are a lot of university students burning tens of thousands of dollars without learning very much.
    - antics 15y ago
      > There are plenty of ways to bring smart people together to learn and do research. > They could be nonprofit; they could be separate from teaching or integrated > with it. You could even call them "universities" if you like. But there's no > reason they have to resemble the current monster. Can you name some ways to actually do this? I'd love to hear about them, but have never actually seen a system like that. Even if there was though, before you go yanking money out of the system, you should actually try to replace it. And that will take time and money, and you will have to convince great scientists to make the switch, in spite of the fact that they will probably have less money, less resources, and spend more time doing something other than interesting research in order to build said system. That's all really hard. Recently a lot of academics have been pushing for open journals, even going so far as to boycott closed ones. Even this is fairly controversial. :( > Sure, but the university system isn't sold that way. We're meant to believe > the research done in universities is all useful. Sold by whom? Guidance counselors? Other students? I don't believe I've ever met a professor who thought that all, or even most research, is life-changing, or even very interesting. I just don't buy that you heard that from a reliable source. > Universities have special privileges when it comes to fostering immigration. > If America had world-class research centers with the same privileges, > people would still love to come here and they'd be able to do so. It's not only about privilege: schools are known by foreigners as a system that allows them to get to the US. In order for this transition to be effective, you'd have to supplant the educational system, then get everyone to know about your alternative system. And besides that, the institutions that do the hiring are incredibly biased towards American schools. I work for a reasonably prestigious lab, and the people in charge are (charitably put) deeply suspicious of research from Chinese and Indian schools. When given a choice, they will hire a PhD from an American school almost always. Exceptions include University College at London, Oxford, Cambridge, Utrecht, etc., but it is a vanishingly small list, and even they I would say are much less likely to be hired. > As you point out, universities aren't very good at this. Maybe a lot of people > won't use libraries, and many who do won't be very productive. But > as you suggested in one of your other points, the instances that pay > off really pay off. And libraries do this much more efficiently than universities, in terms of money spent. There are a lot of > university students burning tens of thousands of dollars without learning > very much. Oh man, I'd really love to believe that, but I just don't see it. Science is still pretty much a communal affair, and the mere availability of knowledge does not make science happen. You need a robust social framework to evolve it. I just don't see that in libraries.
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sliverstorm 15y ago
Yes, university funding has already seen some cuts, but I’d rather see more cuts to universities and fewer cuts to libraries. They’re not the same thing. Of course they are not the same thing. So why are we comparing them as if they were? Rather than identifying a library's strengths and comparing that directly to universities, you should identify a library's strengths and a university's strengths, and compare the two sets.
- johnnybgoode 15y ago
  Respectfully, I don't think I've done what you say I've done. I say "they're not the same thing" because, as I said in the post, a lot of people lump them together as "investing in knowledge for society" or the like. I didn't set out to identify a library's strengths. I believe many of the university's supposed strengths are actually better applicable to libraries.
  - wtvanhest 15y ago
    I'm not sure if universities should have their funding cut but libraries seem very foolish to keep funding. Wouldn't it be better to invest all the money currently spent on libraries in to an online library? Imagine the amount of information we could have easy access to?
    - johnnybgoode 15y ago
      The top story on Hacker News right now, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3607217 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3607217 (also the link I start the post with), explains one of the problems with doing that. As many important functions move online, the library is one place someone without a computer and computer skills can use to gain access to the online world. Libraries also provide a meeting place for the community, access to librarians, and many free classes. I do agree it makes less sense now for libraries to have large physical collections. The shift to an online library seems inevitable there. But access to this from local libraries is still important.
      - 15y ago
Lendal 15y ago
Good article. Unfortunately while reading it, it's difficult to ignore the fact that neither of these should be cut at all before cuts are made to overseas military campaigns, CIA, war on drugs, DHS, corporate welfare, cronyism, etc. etc.
- johnnybgoode 15y ago
  Thank you, and I agree with you. I'd hope nearly everyone agrees with what you said. The way I see it, libraries are so incredible, and so important, that even the mighty university should be cut before libraries are.
- bmj 15y ago
  Except the article is about a state cutting library funding. While California likely sends a fair amount of tax dollars to Washington, D.C., I'm fairly sure their state coffers are directly funding military campaigns and the DHS. * Edit: grammar
twiceaday 15y ago
I feel like access to people in the field is _much_ more valuable than access to books on the subject.
marshray 15y ago
Libraries are also a great place to apply for jobs or file your taxes.
rdl 15y ago
I think a lot of the argument for public funding of universities (and for K-12 education, even) is that public goods are created by having a highly educated population (workforce, voters, etc.) To the extent that university education produces private goods (specific career training, credentials, etc.) there is a lot weaker argument for public funding. The argument for public funding of universities is mostly not about it being a social safety net or producing equality of opportunity, at least not before the early 1990s or so, so that university students are generally from middle class or higher isn't as relevant.
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  Ironically, what do the best libraries traditionally contain? Works created by highly educated individuals. Yes, you will always have your pulp fiction, but if a library's job is to disseminate knowledge to the masses, doesn't that make libraries reliant on a source to develop that knowledge?
  - bmj 15y ago
    This isn't an either/or matter. I suspect that plenty of highly educated individuals came from private universities. And I also suspect that there's plenty of knowledge to be had from non-educated individuals, too.
  - Volpe 15y ago
    True... that would be relevant if the world began and ended on the borders of california...
nnnnni 15y ago
Good point. UCLA and its ilk are famous enough, it'd serve the public much better to fund public services like libraries.
chaostheory 15y ago
Given the skyrocketing costs of university education, I would think that there was a lot of waste to be found there. Still I agree with another commenter. The real issue is why we spend so much money subsidizing corporations as well as our foreign adventures and the drug war. All of which are not sustainable in the long run.
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possibilistic 15y ago
I couldn't have learned necessary hands-on chemistry and biology from a library. Good technique can't be read about; it must simply be learned in the laboratory from repeated mistakes. After the hand-holding freshman year, half of the chem/bio curriculum is dedicated to working independently, in the lab, under time constraints and pressure. Theory can be learned from a book, but it's not necessarily easy for everyone. Only highly-motivated self-learners can teach themselves a subject, and then they must take on the additional work required to cut through "information space" to find exactly the texts they need. I don't think even a quarter of university students today have the capacity to learn in this manner, completely detached from the university system. CS students are very lucky. We have mailing lists, IRC, HN/proggit, stackoverflow, good tools, documentation and tutorials freely accessible. These resources aren't as plentiful or accessible for other STEM majors. Outside of a few IRC channels, they don't even exist for chem/bio. (You can't cite databases--they are too complicated for new learners.) If we want a more autodidactic society, a lot of changes have to be made to early childhood education. Additionally, we have to provide a lot of tools (guided curriculum to keep learners on track, etc.) to support this manner of learning.
- johnnybgoode 15y ago
  I agree hands-on learning in a lab is important. I'm not suggesting everyone should stop this and only read books instead. But learning in a lab doesn't need to be tied to a $100,000-$200,000 four-year university degree program. As a society, we should be able to make this much more accessible. (I don't mean we have to literally put labs in libraries. I mean everyone should be able to learn this way cheaply, in the same spirit that a library makes information accessible for free.) CS students are very lucky. We have mailing lists, IRC, HN/proggit, stackoverflow, good tools, documentation and tutorials freely accessible. These resources aren't as plentiful or accessible for other STEM majors. You're right, and we should fix that. People interested in other STEM fields shouldn't be forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars and four years to gain access to this knowledge.
  - sunnynagra 15y ago
    I got a degree in Biochemistry from UCLA. I've had good professors and bad professors, but it is not all about learning theory or even all about getting hands on in a lab. Technique should not be what everything should be centered on, if you are good, you can usually get technique down very quickly. There is so much more that you learn that is kind of intangible. If you take a lab course and just follow the procedure and don't take anything away then you missed out on a lot because anyone can follow a procedure, it is much more about learning to think critically. Also, it is not only about learning, but having access to cutting edge research in the same building that you are learning in. If all you did in college was go to class and then went back home, then you missed out on one of the biggest opportunities you have in life. A lot of your time should also be spent trying to learn as much as possible from some of the top researchers in their field by volunteering time in their labs.
feralchimp 15y ago
It's been reported that a key factor in the rising end-user cost of State college tuition is that states are already deeply cutting this funding.
firefoxman1 15y ago
Yeah, higher tuition is exactly what I wanted. There's a reason state schools are so much cheaper than private: state funding. As much as I love libraries, I hardly visit one thanks to the thousands (millions?) of public domain books I can get free straight to my Kindle. The only thing I would want to visit a library for would be books like O'Reilly books, but my college pays a subscription to Safari Books that allows students access to literally thousands of such books completely free; O'Reilly, Apress, etc. so my thirst is quenched for now. The beauty is that as soon as a new book is published, it's on the site. And there aren't HTML3 books from the 90's still wasting (virtual) shelf space like my library. Random thought, but that could be the future of the library. What if a little bit of tax money went toward an online directory like Safari Books instead of a huge expensive library building? Always updated, easy access, and a much wider selection? I'd go for it. I guess baby boomers wouldn't though.
- learc83 15y ago
  >state funding Indirect state (and federal) funding, in the form of scholarships, grants, and loans, is one of the reasons tuition is so high in the first place. If student loans weren't so plentiful colleges wouldn't cost 10-50k a year, because no one would pay.
  - firefoxman1 15y ago
    That is a very good point. Yeah, I completely agree with you that the easy access to such high sums of loan money for students has led to the high inflation of college prices, but we don't need anything to raise those rates even higher.
  - Joakal 15y ago
    Some more parts of the equation; deregulation, unemployment pressures, some job degrees aren't helpful, heavy cultural emphasis on degrees to be successful, culture of short-term thinking and lack of financial education.
    - learc83 15y ago
scrod 15y ago
It's really not that difficult. Adjust the income tax brackets and raise the rates. Oh yeah, and go flush your disgusting self-serving libertarian/objectivist philosophy down the drain, too.
glomph 15y ago
Why make it a dichotomy?
microarchitect 15y ago
This is a terrible article and I don't know why it's near the top of HN. Libraries do a much better job of directly serving the poor. Universities, at best, tend to do this indirectly, if at all. Most university students and professors are already middle class or higher. This came off as a rhetorical device with little meaning. First, there's an implicit value judgement that "serving the poor" is better than serving the "middle class". It's not clear why this should be true and even if the judgement itself were true, the author does nothing to backup his claim that libraries serve the poor and universities don't. Maybe serving the middle class by producing a highly qualified workforce eventually helps the poor more than just throwing money at libraries. I don't know if this is the case, but if we're the in the business of throwing out assertions that we like I'd like to throw this one into the mix. The author needs to do a much better job of convincing us that libraries are more of a social good than universities. And we're looking for more than just a few nicely written anecdotes. Universities, while sometimes performing valuable research, are constantly wasting huge sums of money. Much of this money comes from loading up 17-to-21-year-olds with crippling student loans. Universities are constantly wasting huge sums of money? How and where? I'd like to see some citations please. And why is the student loan system a criticism of the university rather than the financial aid system currently practiced in the US. Awfully muddled thinking here. Libraries are famously impartial and nonjudgmental, and have no agenda other than to provide equitable access to information to anyone who desires it. Most university departments are rife with ideology and are hostile to conflicting views. I'm going to ignore this bit which sounds suspiciously like right-wing propaganda. Libraries are open and free to everyone. What they do only improves people’s prospects. The primary purpose of universities, granting credentials, is by definition exclusionary. They improve the prospects of a few at the expense of others, by fostering an environment where people are expected to have degrees before they can do anything of value, and erecting unnecessary barriers to individual prosperity. This is a laughably poor argument. Who says people are expected to have degrees before they can do anything of value? Many of the most important innovators of our times do not have college degrees. And certainly nobody is erecting an unnecessary barrier to "individual prosperity". If society or more specifically big business values college degrees, this isn't an indictment of the university itself and the solution certainly isn't to reduce funding so that fewer degrees are given out. Also, it's not a zero-sum game. Granting certifications to a few doesn't improve their prospects at the expense of others. I think it's ironic that the OP used a computer and the internet to publish his propagandist rant; an action that would've been impossible without all the academic research into computing and networking systems in the last few decades. I'd argue that the economic fallout of that research alone has more than paid back whatever money the US government has invested in universities.
pbnjay 15y ago
Hate to break it to you, but Universities also employ a LOT of trade workers as well, it's not all academics and students. I think it would be fair to say that cutting a similar amount of funding from the california university system would result in a similar number of janitorial, HVAC, maintenance, landscaping, administrative, _librarian_, technology support, and other job losses. Sure, cutting something as important as state libraries sucks, but you'd be pretty naive to think that shifting the cuts to any other sector wouldn't result in the same amount of job losses.
keithvan 15y ago
I'm confused as to the popularity of this article, given California has cut funding to both universities and public libraries. It's not a zero-sum game; usually funding for both public goods follow hand in hand. Not to mention university libraries, a class of their own.
apedley 15y ago
Libraries have a short life left. I don't know many people who go to them anymore considering the vast amounts of information on the Internet and now eReaders. Libraries may offer other services than just the loaning of books and dvd's but in that case community centers will appear or other businesses to fill those needs. I know some people don't have access to the internet or a computer but that is changing. I don't think libraries will disappear overnight but they are going (as we know them).
yequalsx 15y ago
The article is, at best, heavy on the hyperbole and at worst factually wrong. The first sentence is: "So, California is cutting library funding instead of, you know, anything else." The state budget has forced cuts in many departments. We're talking a $12 million cut to libraries. Higher education has been cut hundreds of millions of dollars. The article then goes on to claim that higher education serve poor people "at best, tend to do this indirectly, if at all." The next sentence says "Most university students and professors are already middle class or higher." If not all university students are middle class or higher then it is benefitting lower class students. Why say "if at all" when the next sentence implies that some poor people are helped? Does the author want professors to be poor? Of course most professors are middle class or higher. I expect all of them to be. Then there is this statement: "The primary purpose of universities, granting credentials, is by definition exclusionary." This sentence, together with the sentence before it, suggests the author thinks this is a bad thing. Some students fail out of engineering. This is a good thing because not everyone is cut out for this type of work. Libraries should be open for everyone. Universities should not grant degrees to everyone. The functions of libraries and universities are disparate. It's fine to think one is more important than the other. It's sloppy to not take into consideration the differences in focus between the two entities.

70 points by johnnybgoode 15y ago

Is it really worth comparing them so simplistically? This is a point-of-view from one side, pointing at a few flaws (of many, ignoring the positives) of universities, and a few positives (of many, ignoring the flaws) of libraries. 'Comparisons are odious' as they say....

johnnybgoode 15y ago

While this post focuses on universities and libraries, and I'm serious about preferring university cuts to library cuts, obviously there are plenty of other things that could probably be cut first.

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antics 15y ago
If there are plenty of other things to cut first, why are we comparing the two? Why not complain that they should cut something else instead of universities? I know the answer to this, and it makes me a bit sad. It's easy for Americans to resent their university system because, at least in CS, it is arguable that they don't actually need it. In some cases, it even hurts American kids. But before we all jump on this bandwagon (again) let's consider that we are perhaps being a bit myopic. In the first place, libraries are a great repository of knowledge. But knowledge does not equal production, and whether you or I or anyone else here wants to admit it, a tremendous amount of stuff has been invented, either totally, or almost totally, as a component of university research. What would the world be without transactional databases, A* search, quicksort, cryptography, the idea of programming languages and so on ad infinatum. I could probably fill up literally a whole book listing the things in CS that were invented at Universities. There are more for other fields. You might contend that they all would have been invented eventually, but the question still remains: what would the world look like if universities had not been around to foster these ideas? New ideas need friends, and Bell labs can't employ all the geniuses. I know, I know, you might contend that most research in universities is either pointless or close to pointless. Unfortunately, you'd be right. But remember, that's the Zipf curve. The ideas that are big are really, really big. Not just in universities, either: ideas produced by universities (for example, the ones I listed above) have changed the way that the world operates at a fundamental level, and they continue to do this. And when people come to universities and engage in work related to it, they carry it home, they carry it to their job, and they carry it out of the country. This is the way the world works. I know HN hates this opinion, but it is true. The other thing I want to mention is that the vast majority of these life-changing ideas come out of American universities. This is a truly global system now. People come from all over the world to study here, and when they do, they sometimes stay here. Do people come to America to study at libraries? The simple and fact of the matter is that not all talented people are born in the US, and American universities are a very important gateway to get talented people into the US. In contrast, the library system is a purely domestic product for the public that happens to be inside US. I know that you think that universities don't "help the poor", but consider that this is really only true for the domestic poor. They are an irreplaceable resource for the poor outside. I'm not pitting "our" poor against "their" poor, but it's just something to think about. The last thing I wanted to point out is that the fact that libraries are a useful repository of knowledge does not mean that it will make people productive. Universities are not good at this either, but the consistent usership of public libraries is pitifully small. The fact that they exist does not mean that people will use them, since they do exist, and people clearly mostly do not. The bottom line is this: your points all have some grain of truth to them, or they are true outright. But when you don't bother to examine why this system exists to begin with before you state that another systems should be preferred, you are undermining your own point in a huge way. In particular, to say that we should toss an incredibly important and global system for some domestic system that people don't use is utterly wrong. That all said, the correct answer is: cut neither, and instead cut part of the military.
- johnnybgoode 15y ago
  To be perfectly clear, I'd love to cut military spending, bailouts, drug war spending, etc. This article was about a state funding issue, but I'm fine leaving that aside, since ultimately it's all government spending. In the first place, libraries are a great repository of knowledge. But knowledge does not equal production, and whether you or I or anyone else here wants to admit it, a tremendous amount of stuff has been invented, either totally, or almost totally, as a component of university research. I don't mind admitting some useful things have come out of universities. But this doesn't mean we need to continue propping up the university system as it exists today. You admit it has many flaws. There are plenty of ways to bring smart people together to learn and do research. They could be nonprofit; they could be separate from teaching or integrated with it. You could even call them "universities" if you like. But there's no reason they have to resemble the current monster. True, most research in universities is either pointless or close to pointless, but that's the Zipf curve. The ideas that are big are really, really big. Sure, but the university system isn't sold that way. We're meant to believe the research done in universities is all useful. People come from all over the world to study here, and when they do, they sometimes stay here. Do people come to America to study at libraries? Universities have special privileges when it comes to fostering immigration. If America had world-class research centers with the same privileges, people would still love to come here and they'd be able to do so. The last thing I wanted to point out is that the fact that libraries are a useful repository of knowledge does not mean that it will make people productive. Universities are not good at this either, but the consistent usership of public libraries is pitifully small. The fact that they exist does not mean that people will use them. As you point out, universities aren't very good at this. Maybe a lot of people won't use libraries, and many who do won't be very productive. But as you suggested in one of your other points, the instances that pay off really pay off. And libraries do this much more efficiently than universities, in terms of money spent. There are a lot of university students burning tens of thousands of dollars without learning very much.
  - antics 15y ago
    > There are plenty of ways to bring smart people together to learn and do research. > They could be nonprofit; they could be separate from teaching or integrated > with it. You could even call them "universities" if you like. But there's no > reason they have to resemble the current monster. Can you name some ways to actually do this? I'd love to hear about them, but have never actually seen a system like that. Even if there was though, before you go yanking money out of the system, you should actually try to replace it. And that will take time and money, and you will have to convince great scientists to make the switch, in spite of the fact that they will probably have less money, less resources, and spend more time doing something other than interesting research in order to build said system. That's all really hard. Recently a lot of academics have been pushing for open journals, even going so far as to boycott closed ones. Even this is fairly controversial. :( > Sure, but the university system isn't sold that way. We're meant to believe > the research done in universities is all useful. Sold by whom? Guidance counselors? Other students? I don't believe I've ever met a professor who thought that all, or even most research, is life-changing, or even very interesting. I just don't buy that you heard that from a reliable source. > Universities have special privileges when it comes to fostering immigration. > If America had world-class research centers with the same privileges, > people would still love to come here and they'd be able to do so. It's not only about privilege: schools are known by foreigners as a system that allows them to get to the US. In order for this transition to be effective, you'd have to supplant the educational system, then get everyone to know about your alternative system. And besides that, the institutions that do the hiring are incredibly biased towards American schools. I work for a reasonably prestigious lab, and the people in charge are (charitably put) deeply suspicious of research from Chinese and Indian schools. When given a choice, they will hire a PhD from an American school almost always. Exceptions include University College at London, Oxford, Cambridge, Utrecht, etc., but it is a vanishingly small list, and even they I would say are much less likely to be hired. > As you point out, universities aren't very good at this. Maybe a lot of people > won't use libraries, and many who do won't be very productive. But > as you suggested in one of your other points, the instances that pay > off really pay off. And libraries do this much more efficiently than universities, in terms of money spent. There are a lot of > university students burning tens of thousands of dollars without learning > very much. Oh man, I'd really love to believe that, but I just don't see it. Science is still pretty much a communal affair, and the mere availability of knowledge does not make science happen. You need a robust social framework to evolve it. I just don't see that in libraries.

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sliverstorm 15y ago

Yes, university funding has already seen some cuts, but I’d rather see more cuts to universities and fewer cuts to libraries. They’re not the same thing. Of course they are not the same thing. So why are we comparing them as if they were? Rather than identifying a library's strengths and comparing that directly to universities, you should identify a library's strengths and a university's strengths, and compare the two sets.

johnnybgoode 15y ago
Respectfully, I don't think I've done what you say I've done. I say "they're not the same thing" because, as I said in the post, a lot of people lump them together as "investing in knowledge for society" or the like. I didn't set out to identify a library's strengths. I believe many of the university's supposed strengths are actually better applicable to libraries.
- wtvanhest 15y ago
  I'm not sure if universities should have their funding cut but libraries seem very foolish to keep funding. Wouldn't it be better to invest all the money currently spent on libraries in to an online library? Imagine the amount of information we could have easy access to?
  - johnnybgoode 15y ago
    The top story on Hacker News right now, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3607217 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3607217 (also the link I start the post with), explains one of the problems with doing that. As many important functions move online, the library is one place someone without a computer and computer skills can use to gain access to the online world. Libraries also provide a meeting place for the community, access to librarians, and many free classes. I do agree it makes less sense now for libraries to have large physical collections. The shift to an online library seems inevitable there. But access to this from local libraries is still important.
    - 15y ago

Lendal 15y ago

Good article. Unfortunately while reading it, it's difficult to ignore the fact that neither of these should be cut at all before cuts are made to overseas military campaigns, CIA, war on drugs, DHS, corporate welfare, cronyism, etc. etc.

johnnybgoode 15y ago
Thank you, and I agree with you. I'd hope nearly everyone agrees with what you said. The way I see it, libraries are so incredible, and so important, that even the mighty university should be cut before libraries are.
bmj 15y ago
Except the article is about a state cutting library funding. While California likely sends a fair amount of tax dollars to Washington, D.C., I'm fairly sure their state coffers are directly funding military campaigns and the DHS. * Edit: grammar

twiceaday 15y ago

I feel like access to people in the field is _much_ more valuable than access to books on the subject.

marshray 15y ago

Libraries are also a great place to apply for jobs or file your taxes.

rdl 15y ago

I think a lot of the argument for public funding of universities (and for K-12 education, even) is that public goods are created by having a highly educated population (workforce, voters, etc.) To the extent that university education produces private goods (specific career training, credentials, etc.) there is a lot weaker argument for public funding. The argument for public funding of universities is mostly not about it being a social safety net or producing equality of opportunity, at least not before the early 1990s or so, so that university students are generally from middle class or higher isn't as relevant.

sliverstorm 15y ago
Ironically, what do the best libraries traditionally contain? Works created by highly educated individuals. Yes, you will always have your pulp fiction, but if a library's job is to disseminate knowledge to the masses, doesn't that make libraries reliant on a source to develop that knowledge?
- bmj 15y ago
  This isn't an either/or matter. I suspect that plenty of highly educated individuals came from private universities. And I also suspect that there's plenty of knowledge to be had from non-educated individuals, too.
- Volpe 15y ago
  True... that would be relevant if the world began and ended on the borders of california...

nnnnni 15y ago

Good point. UCLA and its ilk are famous enough, it'd serve the public much better to fund public services like libraries.

chaostheory 15y ago

Given the skyrocketing costs of university education, I would think that there was a lot of waste to be found there. Still I agree with another commenter. The real issue is why we spend so much money subsidizing corporations as well as our foreign adventures and the drug war. All of which are not sustainable in the long run.

deleted 15y ago

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possibilistic 15y ago

I couldn't have learned necessary hands-on chemistry and biology from a library. Good technique can't be read about; it must simply be learned in the laboratory from repeated mistakes. After the hand-holding freshman year, half of the chem/bio curriculum is dedicated to working independently, in the lab, under time constraints and pressure. Theory can be learned from a book, but it's not necessarily easy for everyone. Only highly-motivated self-learners can teach themselves a subject, and then they must take on the additional work required to cut through "information space" to find exactly the texts they need. I don't think even a quarter of university students today have the capacity to learn in this manner, completely detached from the university system. CS students are very lucky. We have mailing lists, IRC, HN/proggit, stackoverflow, good tools, documentation and tutorials freely accessible. These resources aren't as plentiful or accessible for other STEM majors. Outside of a few IRC channels, they don't even exist for chem/bio. (You can't cite databases--they are too complicated for new learners.) If we want a more autodidactic society, a lot of changes have to be made to early childhood education. Additionally, we have to provide a lot of tools (guided curriculum to keep learners on track, etc.) to support this manner of learning.

johnnybgoode 15y ago
I agree hands-on learning in a lab is important. I'm not suggesting everyone should stop this and only read books instead. But learning in a lab doesn't need to be tied to a $100,000-$200,000 four-year university degree program. As a society, we should be able to make this much more accessible. (I don't mean we have to literally put labs in libraries. I mean everyone should be able to learn this way cheaply, in the same spirit that a library makes information accessible for free.) CS students are very lucky. We have mailing lists, IRC, HN/proggit, stackoverflow, good tools, documentation and tutorials freely accessible. These resources aren't as plentiful or accessible for other STEM majors. You're right, and we should fix that. People interested in other STEM fields shouldn't be forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars and four years to gain access to this knowledge.
- sunnynagra 15y ago
  I got a degree in Biochemistry from UCLA. I've had good professors and bad professors, but it is not all about learning theory or even all about getting hands on in a lab. Technique should not be what everything should be centered on, if you are good, you can usually get technique down very quickly. There is so much more that you learn that is kind of intangible. If you take a lab course and just follow the procedure and don't take anything away then you missed out on a lot because anyone can follow a procedure, it is much more about learning to think critically. Also, it is not only about learning, but having access to cutting edge research in the same building that you are learning in. If all you did in college was go to class and then went back home, then you missed out on one of the biggest opportunities you have in life. A lot of your time should also be spent trying to learn as much as possible from some of the top researchers in their field by volunteering time in their labs.

feralchimp 15y ago

It's been reported that a key factor in the rising end-user cost of State college tuition is that states are already deeply cutting this funding.

firefoxman1 15y ago

Yeah, higher tuition is exactly what I wanted. There's a reason state schools are so much cheaper than private: state funding. As much as I love libraries, I hardly visit one thanks to the thousands (millions?) of public domain books I can get free straight to my Kindle. The only thing I would want to visit a library for would be books like O'Reilly books, but my college pays a subscription to Safari Books that allows students access to literally thousands of such books completely free; O'Reilly, Apress, etc. so my thirst is quenched for now. The beauty is that as soon as a new book is published, it's on the site. And there aren't HTML3 books from the 90's still wasting (virtual) shelf space like my library. Random thought, but that could be the future of the library. What if a little bit of tax money went toward an online directory like Safari Books instead of a huge expensive library building? Always updated, easy access, and a much wider selection? I'd go for it. I guess baby boomers wouldn't though.

learc83 15y ago
>state funding Indirect state (and federal) funding, in the form of scholarships, grants, and loans, is one of the reasons tuition is so high in the first place. If student loans weren't so plentiful colleges wouldn't cost 10-50k a year, because no one would pay.
- firefoxman1 15y ago
  That is a very good point. Yeah, I completely agree with you that the easy access to such high sums of loan money for students has led to the high inflation of college prices, but we don't need anything to raise those rates even higher.
- Joakal 15y ago
  Some more parts of the equation; deregulation, unemployment pressures, some job degrees aren't helpful, heavy cultural emphasis on degrees to be successful, culture of short-term thinking and lack of financial education.
  - learc83 15y ago

scrod 15y ago

It's really not that difficult. Adjust the income tax brackets and raise the rates. Oh yeah, and go flush your disgusting self-serving libertarian/objectivist philosophy down the drain, too.

glomph 15y ago

Why make it a dichotomy?

microarchitect 15y ago

This is a terrible article and I don't know why it's near the top of HN. Libraries do a much better job of directly serving the poor. Universities, at best, tend to do this indirectly, if at all. Most university students and professors are already middle class or higher. This came off as a rhetorical device with little meaning. First, there's an implicit value judgement that "serving the poor" is better than serving the "middle class". It's not clear why this should be true and even if the judgement itself were true, the author does nothing to backup his claim that libraries serve the poor and universities don't. Maybe serving the middle class by producing a highly qualified workforce eventually helps the poor more than just throwing money at libraries. I don't know if this is the case, but if we're the in the business of throwing out assertions that we like I'd like to throw this one into the mix. The author needs to do a much better job of convincing us that libraries are more of a social good than universities. And we're looking for more than just a few nicely written anecdotes. Universities, while sometimes performing valuable research, are constantly wasting huge sums of money. Much of this money comes from loading up 17-to-21-year-olds with crippling student loans. Universities are constantly wasting huge sums of money? How and where? I'd like to see some citations please. And why is the student loan system a criticism of the university rather than the financial aid system currently practiced in the US. Awfully muddled thinking here. Libraries are famously impartial and nonjudgmental, and have no agenda other than to provide equitable access to information to anyone who desires it. Most university departments are rife with ideology and are hostile to conflicting views. I'm going to ignore this bit which sounds suspiciously like right-wing propaganda. Libraries are open and free to everyone. What they do only improves people’s prospects. The primary purpose of universities, granting credentials, is by definition exclusionary. They improve the prospects of a few at the expense of others, by fostering an environment where people are expected to have degrees before they can do anything of value, and erecting unnecessary barriers to individual prosperity. This is a laughably poor argument. Who says people are expected to have degrees before they can do anything of value? Many of the most important innovators of our times do not have college degrees. And certainly nobody is erecting an unnecessary barrier to "individual prosperity". If society or more specifically big business values college degrees, this isn't an indictment of the university itself and the solution certainly isn't to reduce funding so that fewer degrees are given out. Also, it's not a zero-sum game. Granting certifications to a few doesn't improve their prospects at the expense of others. I think it's ironic that the OP used a computer and the internet to publish his propagandist rant; an action that would've been impossible without all the academic research into computing and networking systems in the last few decades. I'd argue that the economic fallout of that research alone has more than paid back whatever money the US government has invested in universities.

pbnjay 15y ago

Hate to break it to you, but Universities also employ a LOT of trade workers as well, it's not all academics and students. I think it would be fair to say that cutting a similar amount of funding from the california university system would result in a similar number of janitorial, HVAC, maintenance, landscaping, administrative, _librarian_, technology support, and other job losses. Sure, cutting something as important as state libraries sucks, but you'd be pretty naive to think that shifting the cuts to any other sector wouldn't result in the same amount of job losses.

keithvan 15y ago

I'm confused as to the popularity of this article, given California has cut funding to both universities and public libraries. It's not a zero-sum game; usually funding for both public goods follow hand in hand. Not to mention university libraries, a class of their own.

apedley 15y ago

Libraries have a short life left. I don't know many people who go to them anymore considering the vast amounts of information on the Internet and now eReaders. Libraries may offer other services than just the loaning of books and dvd's but in that case community centers will appear or other businesses to fill those needs. I know some people don't have access to the internet or a computer but that is changing. I don't think libraries will disappear overnight but they are going (as we know them).

yequalsx 15y ago

The article is, at best, heavy on the hyperbole and at worst factually wrong. The first sentence is: "So, California is cutting library funding instead of, you know, anything else." The state budget has forced cuts in many departments. We're talking a $12 million cut to libraries. Higher education has been cut hundreds of millions of dollars. The article then goes on to claim that higher education serve poor people "at best, tend to do this indirectly, if at all." The next sentence says "Most university students and professors are already middle class or higher." If not all university students are middle class or higher then it is benefitting lower class students. Why say "if at all" when the next sentence implies that some poor people are helped? Does the author want professors to be poor? Of course most professors are middle class or higher. I expect all of them to be. Then there is this statement: "The primary purpose of universities, granting credentials, is by definition exclusionary." This sentence, together with the sentence before it, suggests the author thinks this is a bad thing. Some students fail out of engineering. This is a good thing because not everyone is cut out for this type of work. Libraries should be open for everyone. Universities should not grant degrees to everyone. The functions of libraries and universities are disparate. It's fine to think one is more important than the other. It's sloppy to not take into consideration the differences in focus between the two entities.