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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

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.

coredog64 4mo ago
Do grad students make enough to live and make payments against the principal of their student loans? If not, then that's robbing Peter to pay Paul.
cmiles8 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo ago
      How do you do this when belief in science, which is important to academic institutions, is unpopular with one faction?
      - wallst07 4mo ago
        When it no longer becomes science and becomes social. There are MANY examples, even in this thread, of this happening.
    - EasyMark 4mo ago
      When and where did this happen before a year and half ago?
    - kenferry 4mo ago
      I mean, is it political when you write a paper that concludes that vaccines are effective or that fish die when streams are polluted? The answer seems to have become "yes", so this is a rhetorical question, but ideally _information_ would be apolitical. We also see the current administration politicizing things like the federal reserve, which has tried VERY hard to be apolitical.
- bilbo0s 4mo ago
  Well there's absolutely the value in a lot of what those PI's teams are doing, what there is no longer is the political will to invest in those endeavors. I think longer term this will mean we start to see a kind of "rise" of places like TUM and Tsinghua. (If that could even be seen as a "rise" at this point? Pretty sure most people already acknowledge their primacy.) At root, MIT was only MIT because of the teams it could collect together. If it can't do that anymore, I don't think people stop putting those teams together, those teams just stop being put together at MIT. The search for fundamental clarity in humanity's great aporias will continue. Just a speedbump.
hamdingers 4mo ago
> The issue here is that PIs don’t have the money to support graduate students What happened to all the money the undergrads are paying?
- jpadkins 4mo ago
  someone has to pay for administrators!
  - trelane 4mo ago
    > someone has to pay for administrators Turns out, this is also research grant money. Half or more of every grant usually goes straight to the university.as "overhead." The universities could change this so more finding went to researchers, but they have zero incentive to.
    - dhosek 4mo ago
      Much of that overhead is not going to admin salaries (although, as stated elsewhere in the discussion money is fungible) but covers things like the cost of buildings, labs, maintenance, etc.
      - shimman 4mo ago
        I had no idea the on-going costs of physical things did not decrease over time, what an interesting thing to know. Here I thought that after you build the building and paid off the building, then for funsies also bought all the land surrounding the building, that at some point it would drastically cheaper to maintain it; but what you're saying makes so much sense!
        dhosek 4mo ago
        You have clearly never owned a home. The older the building, the more maintenance it requires.

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.

coredog64 4mo ago

Do grad students make enough to live and make payments against the principal of their student loans? If not, then that's robbing Peter to pay Paul.

cmiles8 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo 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 4mo ago
    How do you do this when belief in science, which is important to academic institutions, is unpopular with one faction?
    - wallst07 4mo ago
      When it no longer becomes science and becomes social. There are MANY examples, even in this thread, of this happening.
  - EasyMark 4mo ago
    When and where did this happen before a year and half ago?
  - kenferry 4mo ago
    I mean, is it political when you write a paper that concludes that vaccines are effective or that fish die when streams are polluted? The answer seems to have become "yes", so this is a rhetorical question, but ideally _information_ would be apolitical. We also see the current administration politicizing things like the federal reserve, which has tried VERY hard to be apolitical.
bilbo0s 4mo ago
Well there's absolutely the value in a lot of what those PI's teams are doing, what there is no longer is the political will to invest in those endeavors. I think longer term this will mean we start to see a kind of "rise" of places like TUM and Tsinghua. (If that could even be seen as a "rise" at this point? Pretty sure most people already acknowledge their primacy.) At root, MIT was only MIT because of the teams it could collect together. If it can't do that anymore, I don't think people stop putting those teams together, those teams just stop being put together at MIT. The search for fundamental clarity in humanity's great aporias will continue. Just a speedbump.

hamdingers 4mo ago

> The issue here is that PIs don’t have the money to support graduate students What happened to all the money the undergrads are paying?

jpadkins 4mo ago
someone has to pay for administrators!
- trelane 4mo ago
  > someone has to pay for administrators Turns out, this is also research grant money. Half or more of every grant usually goes straight to the university.as "overhead." The universities could change this so more finding went to researchers, but they have zero incentive to.
  - dhosek 4mo ago
    Much of that overhead is not going to admin salaries (although, as stated elsewhere in the discussion money is fungible) but covers things like the cost of buildings, labs, maintenance, etc.
    - shimman 4mo ago
      I had no idea the on-going costs of physical things did not decrease over time, what an interesting thing to know. Here I thought that after you build the building and paid off the building, then for funsies also bought all the land surrounding the building, that at some point it would drastically cheaper to maintain it; but what you're saying makes so much sense!
      - dhosek 4mo ago
        You have clearly never owned a home. The older the building, the more maintenance it requires.