[HN Gopher] University of Leicester firing all pure math faculty
___________________________________________________________________
University of Leicester firing all pure math faculty
Author : rfurmani
Score : 220 points
Date : 2021-01-30 08:33 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| renewiltord wrote:
| This is good. Too long have universities maintained the illusion
| that all subjects are worth studying. They are not. And we have a
| valuation mechanism - pay. The truth is that some subjects need
| far fewer participants than others. You don't need the marginal
| new mathematician or historian or geographer.
|
| We do need the marginal electrical engineer or software engineer.
| It is crucial that we signal to students their prospects
| accurately and operate our collective learning facilities in the
| interest of the public.
|
| The number of support staff required to service a bug
| organization does grow super linearly which is a reason to have
| smaller universities. These institutions suffer massive
| diseconomies of scale past a certain size as information transfer
| suffers.
|
| Unfortunately, support staff grow more support staff at a higher
| rate than productive staff so it is necessary to keep university
| size small.
|
| But of course, Tim Gowers is a bit of a luminary, so maybe I'm
| entirely wrong on all of this.
| ssivark wrote:
| Where would you rank the marginal university administrator?
| daniel-thompson wrote:
| This is classic short-term MBA thinking. It completely misses
| that theoretical researchers are an integral part of a diverse
| research ecosystem, that researcher diversity is more than the
| sum of its parts (or in MBA-speak, is synergistic), that some
| theoretical work eventually does become economically valuable
| as it filters into applied sciences, and that this might take
| longer than one or two quarters after publication.
| rscho wrote:
| That has to be the most capitalistic opinion I've read in a
| long time. This is in essence: "let's just limit access to
| studies yielding no current or short-term anticipated
| industrial benefit to rich people". This is what monetary
| valuation means.
|
| What do you make of studies potentially yielding long-term
| benefits? Yeah, nothing. This is depressing.
| trinovantes wrote:
| I think it's important to fund research for the sake of research
| because it's the only way to explore the unknown unknowns of the
| universe. At the extreme end, it's a bit dystopian to consider
| the future of academia being limited to only topics that can
| deliver immediate economic value.
|
| But seeing how much government debt has ballooned in recent
| decades, it's disappointing to see moonshot research (literally
| [1]) may well soon be a thing of the past.
|
| [1] https://lettersofnote.com/2012/08/06/why-explore-space/
| LatteLazy wrote:
| People should note that:
|
| * this is a UK university, tuition is limited to about 30k GBP
| for a (UK standard) 3 year degree. That's 30k total, not per
| year. Accommodation is extra.
|
| * Leicester isn't a particularly good university. It's ranked
| 77th out of 121. 50th out of 68 for maths [0].
|
| * The department has been put on notice a few times that it needs
| more to up its income (get more students, get more research
| grants, get more other funding) or cut it's expenses. It hasn't
| done so.
|
| * There are a whole bunch of wider issues for university funding
| at the moment. A rent strike is costing them money. Inability to
| take on foreign students (who they can charge more) is costing
| them money. A drop in overall intake as more students realise it
| likely isn't worth the money to get a degree etc. Fewer students
| on campus means less sales from university bars, restaurants etc.
| Mix that with high fixed costs and someone has to be let go.
|
| * They're closing the pure maths departments but seem to be
| keeping the others (Including actuarial science) which is likely
| what students actually want. Ultimately UK degrees are mostly
| about getting a job these days, not the beauty of numbers. That's
| sad but that's the predictable consequence of 20 years of
| government policy in the area.
|
| [0] https://www.theguardian.com/education/ng-
| interactive/2020/se...
| throwaways885 wrote:
| "Limited"? UK tuition used to be much, _much_ cheaper:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuition_fees_in_the_United_Kin...
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Yeah, it used to be that the government paid that and
| students went for free or got a grant. Starting back in 2002
| they cut the amount the government paid and increased what
| students paid. So the unis didn't get any more money, the
| government just saved cash.
|
| Total BS imho, but don't get me started...
| throwaways885 wrote:
| It would be less of an issue if there was an actual free
| market, instead all unis just max out the student loan and
| still complain there's not enough money. I'd happily go to
| a shack if there's good teaching.
|
| The US are even more innovative in ripping off students.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I'm always surprised their aren't more US schools that
| are just academics. They all seem to have football teams
| and sports stadiums and up market dorms.
|
| I went to Exeter. I picked the cheapest accommodation. I
| was more than happy with the on site sports centre. I
| wouldn't want to pay double for gold taps and an arena.
|
| I think it would be interesting to see how places fared
| if tuition was linked to rankings. Top 10 can charge full
| wack, Next 10 80%, etc. But that would force people to
| make hard decisions...
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| There are more of these schools than the big names with
| athletic programs. You just never hear about them.
| username90 wrote:
| The Principal leaves money on the table if they only do
| academics. You get paid based on the budget of the
| organisation you run, and just doing academics for 1000
| students obviously needs a smaller budget than doing
| academics, sports, entertainment, lodging etc for 1000
| students.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| I don't think a free market would help that much.
|
| It would have been better if they'd just actually made
| "tuition fees" an actual proper graduation tax, rather
| than a tax for the poor and a loan for the rich.
| hogFeast wrote:
| Just to say, there are two sides to this problem. The UK
| govt had spent two or three decades before it brought in
| fees attempting to get universities to reduce costs...this
| was unsuccessful. The idea was: we can do literally nothing
| about this problem, so students will pay for it (and btw,
| the debt is a fairly soft one), and hopefully universities
| will cut back when students get angry at them...which has
| basically happened after the wave of Chinese money started
| running out a few years ago (and has now gone completely).
| Universities are digging their own graves, and hopefully
| something better will come out of it.
|
| This issue is, btw, basically identical to the one for
| council funding. It is a very tricky area with no easy
| answers but, funnily enough, always ends up with the same
| solution (council funding in the UK is basically
| regressive, like university funding because there is
| literally no way to pressure these institutions to be
| responsible without user paying).
| username90 wrote:
| UK just wanted to stop funding EU students, since EU
| disallowed paying for your own students and not others. The
| problem is that English universities are inherently more
| attractive so UK has way more EU students than EU had UK
| students making UK support a disproportionally large number
| of students.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| One of the craziest things is that we still fund EU
| students 100% as long as they go home after graduation. I
| actually considered doing the same but I was to wedded to
| my UK friends and family.
| mietek wrote:
| _> The problem is that English universities are
| inherently more attractive so UK has way more EU students
| than EU had UK students making UK support a
| disproportionally large number of students._
|
| The English evidently agree this is a problem and have
| been doing their part to make UK universities less
| "inherently" attractive.
| d-lowl wrote:
| > foreign students (who they can charge more)
|
| The amount of money the uni gets is the same. Overseas pay the
| full price, domestic students are subsidised and only pay PS9k,
| but the uni gets it in full anyway. And, no, they still take
| overseas students (with remote studies it's not more difficult,
| than domestic ones). Imperial's Chem department even filled
| more places for 1st year than usual.
| billyoyo wrote:
| You state that "a drop in overall intake as more students
| realise it likely isn't worth the money". This is completely
| unfounded and not supported by statistics at all [1].
| University intake in the UK across all ethnicities has been on
| a steady increase.
|
| Also, I'm not sure it's true to say UK degrees don't care about
| the beauty of number's. Again, the statistics show that the
| number of mathematics students have been according to the
| overall trend [2]. And anecdotally, comparing with friends from
| other countries the UK actually seems to have a university
| system unusually geared to purely academic degrees.
|
| It's my personal belief that while of course university is
| about getting a job, it's also about learning about adulthood
| for many people. People use it to delay the start of their
| working life and enjoy a few years of adult freedom, as well as
| to get a degree. Anecdotally, I know a lot of my friends went
| to uni almost entirely for this reason and had no idea in their
| head about what they'd do after yet. But I don't think there's
| anything wrong with that. In fact with increasing lifetimes I
| think it only makes sense we continue to delay the age at which
| we enter the workforce.
|
| [1] https://www.ethnicity-facts-
| figures.service.gov.uk/education...
|
| [2] https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/16-01-2020/sb255-higher-
| educatio...
| poxwole wrote:
| Running Universities like a business. A scam and a travesty
| ALittleLight wrote:
| The tweets say that pure math is an important part of the
| ecosystem of scholarship at a university (slight paraphrase) and
| I agree with that. I don't really have any concern about axing
| medieval literature though.
| sn41 wrote:
| I am a pure math guy who absolutely loves the Canterbury Tales.
|
| The only people who should be axed are the administrative
| windbags and "bottom-line" scallywags. So clever, aren't they?
| I am sure they can survive out in their precious "real world"
| that they are so infatuated with and sneer others about.
|
| (Besides Sir Michael Atiyah, Leicester also had my favourite
| topologist, Roy O. Davies, who wrote one of the strangest
| papers I have read, "Measures not approximable or not
| specifiable by means of balls".)
| rambojazz wrote:
| Sorry I don't know this Uni in particular, and I agree with
| your comment. But why is this such a big issue? I mean, a lot
| of universities do not have a pure-math faculty because they
| are dedicated to other faculties. I guess it depends on what
| the Uni wants to be. My Uni didn't have a physics department,
| or a medical one, or arts, or music... All of these faculties
| were however available in other Unis.
| OJFord wrote:
| Getting rid of something you already have is more
| newsworthy than never having it, which is mundane as you
| say.
|
| Consider if Marks & Spencer announced it would no longer
| sell clothes, to focus instead on food, for example.
| username90 wrote:
| They want to sack the math department to create a machine
| learning department. But they still need people to teach
| the math classes for machine learning etc, and without the
| math professors they'd need machine learning professors or
| so who aren't as good at maths.
| orange_tee wrote:
| ML uses almost entirely applied math and stochastics:
| optimization, numerics and statistics. Besides that, just
| because they won't have faculty researching pure math,
| doesn't mean they cannot have applied math guys teaching
| pure math classes.
|
| Personally as a math graduate, I think it is better that
| they focus on areas they are good at. I assume the pure
| math department is not doing much. It is also good for
| the students who might want to study math and end up at
| studying at a university that does not do pure math very
| well.
| sn41 wrote:
| > I assume the pure math department is not doing much.
|
| Please see my earlier comment. They once had a Fields
| medalist on their staff. And it was not a one-off
| coincidence. Leicester has a really good tradition of
| pure math.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I also love the Canterbury Tales and still have the intro
| memorized thanks to a professor I had in college. That said,
| if students aren't taking the classes I can't see how the
| school is going to be hurt by losing the faculty. All kinds
| of things tie into math, not so much into medieval
| literature.
|
| (That said, I absolutely agree that administrators should be
| disposed of first and even if there weren't budget problems.)
| Smaug123 wrote:
| Easier not to bite that bullet, I think! Though I found
| https://acoup.blog/2020/07/03/collections-the-practical-case...
| persuasive.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| thats the spirit, "my thing is important, yours is just rubbish
| and should be done away with"
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| The Administrators make their power play: declaring faculty
| redundant. They no longer want pesky faculty _thinking about
| things that don 't earn money_, so the math faculty has to go.
| The end goal is clear: a University is a business, being sold to
| students and Alumni, for the purpose of profit.
| throwaways885 wrote:
| Reality is truly a comedy. One day teachers will be a thing of
| the past in universities.
| raverbashing wrote:
| One day?
|
| Most "professors" (or maybe TA/Instructor is the better
| definition) are temporary positions paying a bit more than
| your retail position.
| netizen-9748 wrote:
| Plenty of them don't do research anymore either, depending
| on the school
| chrisseaton wrote:
| In the UK all professors are permanent positions.
| madpata wrote:
| I can imagine a future in which Universities just pay someone
| to create online courses which they can reuse over the years
| and then just keep the teachers for courses which have a
| practical side (e.g. Robotics, biology/physics/chemistry
| experiments).
| imtringued wrote:
| In theory you can just make your presence courses so bad
| that students are forced to do online courses to actually
| pass the course.
| znpy wrote:
| This might not be 100% bad as a model, as long as it is
| properly implemented. One important thing would be the role
| of teachers in doing exercises and Q&A instead of plain
| lecture recitation from the books.
|
| Having had a roommate that used to be a researcher in the
| university i was attending at the time I was able to see a
| lot of the back-office side that most people don't see.
|
| Long story short, most researcher and professors are
| evaluated on the basis of the output of their research
| (number of publications, journals, h-index and that kind of
| stuff).
|
| Teaching is really an overhead, and a lot of
| researchers/professors game the system by making things as
| standard as possible in their own interest (and whatever
| about the students).
|
| I had seen this myself during a surprisingly short exam
| (circuit theory): taken in the morning, the professor had
| corrected ALL of the exams before 3:30 pm. The trick was in
| using simple numbers (the computations were not the hard
| part of the exam), skimming briefly the piece of paper and
| then checking if the numbers in the solution matched his
| own numbers in his already-solved exam. Duh. I had to go
| there, ask to have the exam evaluated in front of me, and
| for an important part of the exam he candidly said "I
| haven't understood what you did here so I didn't assigned
| any points to that" -- which is really bullshit.
|
| You've got a phd in this shit, you're supposed to be a
| world-class expert on the matter, how could you not
| understand this? It's not that you haven't understood, it's
| that you didn't bother spending 30 seconds to look at the
| piece of paper. (I had learned from the book instead of his
| lessons because I had a full-time job -- and thus he hadn't
| recognized the procedure)
|
| Anyway, I had to keep my temper and explain. He agreed and
| assigned me the points.
|
| To come back to the original point: somebody might think
| he's just an asshole (and btw they wouldn't be wrong) but
| if you know about the back-office dynamics you'd understand
| that he was/is just minimizing the overhead. In a wrong
| way, but still, that's what he was/is doing.
| jbullock35 wrote:
| > for an important part of the exam he candidly said "I
| haven't understood what you did here so I didn't assigned
| any points to that" -- which is really bullshit.
|
| > You've got a phd in this shit, you're supposed to be a
| world-class expert on the matter, how could you not
| understand this? It's not that you haven't understood,
| it's that you didn't bother spending 30 seconds to look
| at the piece of paper.
|
| I can't speak to this specific case. And awarding no
| points at all does sound quite unusual. But, speaking as
| a professor, it's disturbing to see how often and how
| badly students overestimate the intelligibility of their
| work.
|
| Important qualification: I am thinking of student essays
| and prose answers to exam questions. The situation may be
| very different in circuit theory and other areas in which
| answers to exam questions often aren't in prose.
| njanirudh wrote:
| this is ironic because none of the modern AI, robotics
| would work practically without pure maths as the base.
| [deleted]
| threatofrain wrote:
| Right now their endowment is looking perilously low. Is that
| normal for a UK university? If the university goes bankrupt,
| can they expect government bailout?
| rambojazz wrote:
| A lot of universities do not have a pure math faculty. It can be
| good or bad, it depends on the goals of the university and which
| faculties it wants to specialize on.
| morelisp wrote:
| > A lot of universities do not have a pure math faculty.
|
| If true this shocks me. Pure math makes up two of the seven
| liberal arts. The pure math department at my (US state)
| university had significantly higher status than the applied
| one, and this seemed to hold true for the other (also mostly
| state) universities my friends went to as well.
|
| Community colleges and technical schools? Sure. Colleges? OK I
| guess, if they have a notable e.g. physics or engineering
| program and keep the pure math courses there for administrative
| reasons. A _university_ without _any_ pure math faculty? Then
| you 're not a university anymore...
| robjan wrote:
| In the UK many of the equivalent to community colleges and
| technical schools (polytechnics) have been reclassified as
| universities to attract more funding and prestige
| pmiller2 wrote:
| I don't know of a single US research university that doesn't
| have a math department.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| The article is about pure math, which is the foundation of
| mathematics using sets, topology, etc. It has separate
| classes, textbooks and professors from applied mathematics,
| and often a very low courseload because of the difficulty
| (like 24 hours per week.)
|
| From a simplistic standpoint, pure math is not focused on
| equations or numeric solutions, unlike applied mathematics.
| (You don't need a calculator for most pure math classes.)
| redis_mlc wrote:
| Pure math departments are important for identifying the
| outlier students who are capable of contributing to the
| field.
|
| An entire department might only find one star per year (or
| decade), but that could advance a topic 100 years overall.
|
| Occasionally a self-taught prodigy like Ramanajuan emerges,
| but society needs many more.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Pure math makes up two of the seven liberal arts.
|
| The UK university model doesn't follow the liberal arts
| model. That's not what we're aiming to do over here.
| Especially at a very low-tier university like Leicester. Our
| degrees are more highly specialised than yours.
|
| Don't judge our universities by your model.
| morelisp wrote:
| "Your model" in this case means the model used by not only
| the US, but the rest of the Anglosphere, Europe, most of
| Asia, and generally the rest of the world - as well as the
| UK until less than 30 years ago.
|
| Don't blame us when you misuse the damn word.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > as well as the UK until less than 30 years ago
|
| I'm not sure what you are referring to - we didn't use a
| liberal arts model 30 years ago. The modern idea of
| 'liberal arts' is an American invention, aping classical
| ideals but not actual traditional European practices.
| morelisp wrote:
| The seven liberal arts are the foundation of the European
| university system and not a modern American invention.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| No, only if we go back as far as the medieval ages, so
| not in practice, which is what I said.
|
| Wikipedia explains
|
| > Thus, on the level of higher education, despite the
| European origin of the liberal arts college, the term
| liberal arts college usually denotes liberal arts
| colleges in the United States. With the exception of
| pioneering institutions such as Franklin University
| Switzerland (formerly known as Franklin College),
| established as a Europe-based, US-style liberal arts
| college in 1969, only recently some efforts have been
| undertaken to systematically "re-import" liberal arts
| education to continental Europe.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education
|
| Almost zero people in Europe will have done a liberal
| arts education. As a mainstream thing it's really a
| uniquely American idea.
|
| And again, where is this idea of the UK doing liberal
| arts 30 years ago from? That's a bizarre claim not
| grounded in any kind of reality.
| morelisp wrote:
| I am going to repeat my original point:
|
| > Pure math makes up two of the seven liberal arts.
|
| This is utterly impossible to understand as anything
| other than a reference _the specific medieval seven
| liberal arts_ which _do historically and practically
| underpin the definition of the unversity_ as distinct
| from other forms of tertiary education, not the "modern"
| concept of a liberal arts education.
|
| Go grind your political axe elsewhere.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Given that America has a literal 'Hamburger University'
| I'm not sure you can complain that a British university
| not having a pure maths department is some kind of
| dilution of the term.
|
| It'd be illegal to call it 'Hamburger University' in the
| UK for comparison, as 'university' is a protected
| designation here and it wouldn't meet the standards for a
| university, while it does in the US.
|
| (McDonald's does have the same training facility in the
| UK, but it doesn't claim to be a 'university' here or
| award 'degrees' like it does in the US.)
| morelisp wrote:
| If you're suggesting that the University of Leicester
| sans math department is at least as legitimate a
| university as Hamburger University, I will agree.
| [deleted]
| Steko wrote:
| No doubt these administrators put very low value on pure math but
| they also know the uproar might/will reduce some of the budget
| cuts they're dealing with.
| hot_fuzzybear wrote:
| As a fellow Czech, who studies in one of top 20 UK universities,
| let me add my two cents.
|
| As of 2020, UK universities are not worth the cost. The tuition
| fees alone amount to 27000 GBP (3-year undergrad) for British
| (non-Scottish) students with EU students now paying foreign
| student fees. I am still under SAAS scheme so I don't pay a
| single pound, which is why I am still here. Nevertheless, the
| cost is too high to pay for something as uncertain as future
| market conditions, let alone life in general (from cancer to
| suddenly disliking your career choice). To make the most out of
| UK universities, smart students choose subjects by faculty and
| its professors. The best bet for Oxbridge and other is still STEM
| while I would be very careful with anything else. Unless the said
| student has a very nice liquid asset portfolio...
|
| Currently, there are two problems in UK universities:
|
| Firstly, the growing trend of limiting free speech and
| radicalisation of student on all sides of political spectrum. I
| witnessed my Slovak friend, who now supports views that would
| make Gottwald and Husak blush, while my catholic friend suddenly
| started to vote for open anti-semite. But that is a whole can of
| worms that I will let anybody else to open and examing. The issue
| I see now is that students and professors activelly selfcensor
| themselves in case of an everpresent snitch is present among
| their ranks (don't you dare say something against CHINA!).
|
| Secondly, students in the UK are neither students or customers,
| they are lifestock. Universities now compete in monopolistic
| market where the quantity of students determines their profits.
| The quality has minimal effect on profits as due to universities
| international reputation, there is no shortage of students. Also
| due to UK government, they also operate mostly as price takers.
| It is not about selling education to students, but to ensure that
| the greatest quantity of students is processed through the
| university system to maximise profits. That is why university
| management gives priority to enlarging university premises rather
| than paying teaching staff a fair wage and pension, which is why
| many professors are striking quite regularly in the UK. In simple
| terms, students are not customers, but raw material that is
| supposed to be processed for profit. Although I am open to
| debate, nobody will ever convince me that an academic institution
| should have the total of 5 bars and nightclubs in order to
| achieve higher level of academic excellence. I like my beer, but
| my personal research never supported my hypothesis that higher
| volume of alcohol leads to better grades.
|
| This is why universities in UK are being filled with
| pseudoscientific courses, while lowering passing grades and
| standards which are effects I have witnessed due to my non-
| academic circumstances that prolonged my degree. It is to ensure
| that the greatest number of students survive through the course
| so that the university can make money of the students from 27000
| tuition + bar spending + gym spending + overpriced accomodation
| fees + any other unecessary bs.
|
| FYI, the above is the reason why I am purposefully staying quite
| far from my university (before covid) and I do not interact with
| students from my university. I am there for one reason only. I
| love my subject and I love my professors who are amazing despite
| the circumstances that they work in!
|
| For fellow Czechs, if I would have a friend who would want to go
| study computer engineering to Oxford, I would point them to CVUT.
| Less money and excellent degree! Unfortunately in my field, the
| education in Czechia is not on par and lacks quite behind the
| rest of the world...I and I have a bad feeling one day soon we
| will pay the price
|
| PS: appologies for spelling, insomnia...
| outoftheabyss wrote:
| Totally agree, though not unique to the UK and even more
| pertinent in most non-STEM subjects
| godelzilla wrote:
| Pure math is an inconvenient subject for schools based on
| reproducing the status quo.
| glapworth wrote:
| I used to work as an Lecturer in the other University in
| Leicester and I have lots of friends and colleagues working in
| various departments at Leicester University. It looks like the
| financial situation at the University is quite bad, and this
| isn't the first time the executive has threatened to close this
| department. I feel for the people working there at the moment.
| Sad times.
| lr1970 wrote:
| Nothing wrong with reshaping their focus if they also rename
| themselves into the Leicester Vocational School. They should be
| stripped of the title University that they are not worthy of any
| longer.
| lordnacho wrote:
| What would make this more clear cut is a summary of what
| situation the university finds itself in. What's happened with
| the finances, why these departments, which admin staff are going?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I wonder if the end game of higher education looks like purely
| administrative bodies with enormous tuition that just provide the
| students with leisure, varsity sports and regular events on the
| currently hot social justice topics.
|
| I studied pure math in the Czech Rep. between 1996 and 2003. The
| administrative staff was about 10 per cent of the entire body of
| employees.
|
| Reading that administrators actually outnumber teaching staff at
| some American universities today, I cannot help but ask what went
| wrong. This kind of bureaucratic bloat would make late Soviet
| Union blush and professor Parkinson rewrite his books.
|
| https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/28/teachers-ou...
| pydry wrote:
| It's part of the MBAization of universities combined with
| typical company politics (the more people under you => the more
| important you are => the more you get paid). It's a recipe for
| a lavishly paid executive class running universities who try to
| run them like a business.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| I'll just throw this out here to put some numbers on this so
| people understand it's more than just a political narrative.
|
| At the University that I went to, Wisconsin, there are 2200
| academic staff. (Professors, TAs, Deans, etc).
|
| The total number of employees, however, is roughly 21000.
|
| Now I understand that this is due to large, operations level
| bureaucracies that are necessary to pull off something like a
| University of Wisconsin. Facilities and Plant, Campus police,
| not to even speak of the big ones like DoIT. (DoIT is all the
| IT people. Network support, web developers, DBAs etc.) I get
| that. At the same time, that's almost a 10 to 1 ratio. Keep
| in mind, the University of Wisconsin is one of the more
| frugal universities out there in this regard.
|
| Again, I don't question that some of this is necessary, how
| much? I don't know. But having the numbers and the positions
| these people are employed in does put us in a better position
| to, at a minimum, have an informed discussion of the subject.
|
| I know that if the University of Wisconsin shut down the math
| department because the web developers and DBAs at DoIT had to
| be paid, I would definitely be someone who would assume that
| to be an unwise decision. Just putting myself in the shoes of
| the people who care about the subject university.
| qwantim1 wrote:
| It could be about budget. It could also be perceived
| incompetence.
|
| If students don't seem to be getting benefit from education
| by professors who focus solely on mathematics, then that
| problem needs to be understood.
|
| This is the second time this has happened according to the
| tweet, and the professors have been unable to defend
| themselves both times.
|
| Maybe someone should offer to assist in improvement of the
| program. It's probably a fine place to work if they want to
| stay there this much.
| rblatz wrote:
| I don't know anything about this group of professors, but
| I would assume a good department head could defend and
| prevent this type of issue. If your superiors continually
| think you and all your peers are dead weight that's as
| much your fault as theirs.
| waterhouse wrote:
| "Yes, Minister" has an episode about a hospital with 500
| employees and no patients:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAk448volww
|
| The show's creators said: "After inventing this absurdity,
| we discovered there were six such hospitals (or very large
| empty wings of hospitals) exactly as we had described them
| in our episode, notably one in Cambridgeshire in which
| there was only one patient: the Matron (head of nursing
| staff) who had fallen over some scaffolding and broken her
| leg."
| veridies wrote:
| The flip side of this is that if have excess capacity for
| medical treatment, that can be incredibly helpful in the
| case of a rare event such as a terrorist attack or a
| pandemic.
| antonvs wrote:
| Excess capacity doesn't have to be 100% operational at
| all times.
| tomp wrote:
| 2019: all these empty hospitals with too much staff and
| no patients?! Let's close them down, save some money!
|
| 2020: why is our medical system running at 90% capacity
| _in normal times_?! Why don 't we have some idle capacity
| for emergencies (natural disaster, pandemic, war)?
| ficklepickle wrote:
| I managed two weeks in university IT as a developer before
| I just had to leave and never come back. If it is anything
| like UBC IT, it is not worth losing math over.
| hedberg10 wrote:
| Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach, administrate.
| ssss11 wrote:
| This pattern of phrase is so condescending, and insulting to
| those who genuinely choose to enter a profession.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Yeah. Especially since a great number of faculty chose to
| turn down jobs that pay 3-4x what they receive from
| universities. My friends from grad school who ended up in
| R1 positions were the most consistently brilliant of my
| cohort.
| hedberg10 wrote:
| Those who can't humor, virtue signal.
| choeger wrote:
| Unfortunately, it contains a kernel of truth. I personally
| met staffers at my alma mater that worked there after
| failing to advance in their academic career but being too
| well connected to not have a safety net.
| netrus wrote:
| I always considered that part of a much needed safety net
| for a professional where stagnation in the hierarchy is
| no option, but there are less positions at the top than
| at the bottom. So yes, a kernel of truth, but not
| necessarily a bad thing.
| djrogers wrote:
| It's a bad thing when the cost of higher education is
| rising at rates 8-10x than inflation due to this excess
| administrative overhead.
|
| If you've been out of school for >10yrs, I'd strongly
| encourage you to look at the current cost of your alma
| matter - it may well shock you.
| choeger wrote:
| To the contrary. It might shock _you_ to hear that it 's
| still free.
| choeger wrote:
| It _is_ a problem. Those that are capable and drop out of
| the insane career filter that is academia get good jobs
| elsewhere. Others end up in the University. And there,
| they don 't even teach.
| geebee wrote:
| I disagree that it contains a kernel of truth, though I
| would agree that it truthfully identifies a malign
| surface growth that occasionally metastizes and, left
| unchecked, destroys the kernel.
|
| I certainly agree that there are people who teach because
| they can't do, but I don't think that teaching because
| you can't do is even part of the kernel of teaching.
|
| As for admins... this is a huge problem right now. They
| are threatening to destroy the host. But a healthy host
| does have a trim, effective, and dedicated group of
| admins.
| Closi wrote:
| It's a play on "those who can, teach" which was a marketing
| campaign in the UK, which somewhat backfired within the UK
| and became the saying "Those who can, do. Those who can't,
| teach".
|
| Clearly there are lots of people who genuinely choose to
| enter teaching, but in certain subjects, for some people,
| it is the de-facto profession if you cannot use your degree
| to do something else. See Avenue Q's "What can you do, with
| a BA in English?".
|
| This is more about high school than university-level
| though.
|
| [Note - I was mistaken - please see the clarification in
| post below!]
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > It's a play on "those who can, teach" which was a
| marketing campaign in the UK, which somewhat backfired
| within the UK and became the saying "Those who can, do.
| Those who can't, teach".
|
| Lol I think you've got that backwards!
|
| The marketing slogan was a play on the common criticism
| of teachers which is a quote of Shaw from around 1900.
| Closi wrote:
| Oops, I'm happy to be corrected - I'll go back into my
| hole...
| walkedaway wrote:
| Those who can't administrate, consult.
|
| (I always heard it as "those who can't teach, consult" but I
| like the administrate introduction...)
| qzw wrote:
| I don't know if this attitude is a cause or an effect of the
| failures in the American education system. In many other
| countries, especially in Asia, teachers are respected if not
| outright revered. Their status is often comparable to medical
| doctors and other professional classes. So people who choose
| to teach are not seen as unfit to engage in other endeavors.
| But in America there's this undercurrent of contempt for
| those who would choose to teach. It just seems like a rather
| self-defeating attitude for a society to have, especially in
| a world where knowledge is the ultimate competitive
| advantage. It seems like our current anti-science, pro-
| ignorance culture is more or less an inevitable outcome of
| such an attitude.
| bazooka_penguin wrote:
| Doctors in the US make 2 to 3x what doctors in Asia make so
| thats not a good comparison. American schools are some of
| the best funded in the world so I'm not sure where the
| stereotype that teachers aren't appreciated enough comes
| from
| antisthenes wrote:
| The attitude is the outcome of the ignorance culture, not
| the other way around.
| jancsika wrote:
| > Those who can't do, teach.
|
| Oh, you must mean rubber duck debugging, where a programmer
| pretends to teach a rubber duck about a bug for the purpose
| of _doing_ the job of revealing the fix for it in the
| process.
|
| I absolutely _love_ rubber duck debugging, too!
|
| Do you tend to start a bug fix with it, or do you reserve it
| for times when you get stuck? I feel like I should use it
| _way_ more often, or at least _way_ earlier than I tend to.
| That would probably eliminate a lot of headaches.
|
| Anyway, great to see a fellow rubber duck debugger here on
| HN! You know I bet if we tried teaching _each other_ about
| rubber duck debugging we 'd reveal _even more_ techniques to
| become more efficient at doing our work.
|
| So much to talk about! So much to teach and do!
|
| I love HN!
| mathattack wrote:
| The selective schools can sell their signaling services and
| support massive bloated administrative groups. People will pay
| for the validation.
|
| Non-selective schools (like Leicester, which admits 80%!of
| applicants, of which only 20% choose to attend) won't be able
| to pull this off. The signaling value is too weak. They can't
| get you an interview at a top company. If they can't prepare
| you for it, how many parents will pay for a 4 year vacation?
| prirun wrote:
| IMO, the main problem with university finances is the easy
| loans and the fact they survive bankruptcy - the only loans I'm
| aware of with this status. Without this easy money, colleges
| and universities could not have raised tuition like they have,
| because most people couldn't pay it.
|
| But with the loans, colleges and universities are flush with
| cash, so they build extravagant dorms, hire way too many
| administrators, VP's, etc.
|
| My idea to fix this is to make the universities provide the
| loans. Then they have an incentive to make sure students
| graduate and have a career path that makes sense (and money!)
|
| We have allowed and encouraged an entire generation to screw
| themselves with these outrageous loans.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| > leisure, varsity sports and regular events on the currently
| hot social justice topics
|
| This seems like a smear of people who care about social justice
| by implication. Why do you suppose they are not interested in
| education and research?
| rblatz wrote:
| I think the key word is "hot". Focusing only on shallow hot
| topic issues like who uses which bathroom feels good, but
| universities should be exploring the depths of social justice
| issues from a more holistic place. I went to university and
| never had to take a women's studies class or an African
| American history class, so I didn't take one. In fact no
| courses on diversity were required, I believe that has been
| to my detriment, and I'd be a much more thoughtful well
| rounded individual had I taken those courses.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| > shallow hot topic issues like who uses which bathroom
|
| This is only shallow because you have made it so. I could
| also say "shallow hot topic issues like bra burning". Drop
| the strawman.
| mola wrote:
| I think the current mindset of american universities is
| commodification of the concept of higher education. Teaching,
| scholastic tradition and enlightment values are sidelined by
| values like customer satisfaction, marketing, and money making
| optimization.
| the_only_law wrote:
| In this case, just let me purchase the fucking credentials
| without having to follow curriculum at their speed or pay for
| any of the things that won't benefit me anymore
| karmakaze wrote:
| The other part is that a degree means you can stick with
| some 'thing' for 4 years. A quality employers value. I
| tried to focus on learning with my time, grades be damned.
| tillinghast wrote:
| But! Think of the middlemen! (sorry, middlepersons)
| lumost wrote:
| This mindset is ultimately what many universities are
| optimizing for. The credential is pretty meaningless if it
| can simply be purchased, people will catch on quickly
| enough.
|
| The ideal business is then one that actively inflates the
| credential's value while lowering the difficulty of
| achieving it. The best way to do this is to increase
| selectivity/restrict supply, raise prices, lower difficulty
| (grade inflation), and increase the time required to get
| the credential, while providing alternate activities for
| those who are inclined to do something other than receiving
| an education.
|
| Heck you can get degree credit by virtue of living in a
| foreign country via a study abroad program.
|
| The other activities a university may participate in like
| research, or educating only matter to the extent they
| enhance the "prestige" of the credential or to benefit the
| minority of students who value academic rigor _more so_
| than the credential.
| Balgair wrote:
| > The best way to do this is to increase
| selectivity/restrict supply, raise prices, lower
| difficulty (grade inflation), and increase the time
| required to get the credential, while providing alternate
| activities for those who are inclined to do something
| other than receiving an education.
|
| A mission that the Ivies are well on their way with. The
| average grade at Harvard is a 3.67 (as of a 2013 source)
| and the prices have never been higher (though that's an
| individual thing, what with scholarships). They only need
| to make it a 5 year program with a MA/MS tagged in to get
| really going; degree-inflation hopped onto grade-
| inflation and dollar-inflation.
|
| Somehow, you then have to work Ultimate Frisbee or chess
| in there too, an athletics-inflation and club-inflation
| (?), so to speak. Kinda like Laurie Laughlin's daughter
| did with the varsity-blues scandal for admissions. I'd
| guess that's already happened then.
|
| What do you end up with besides an empty savings account?
| A 22 years old with a _very_ good resume and a very bad
| taste in beer and jazz.
|
| https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/12/9/stats-grade-
| inf...
| preommr wrote:
| I've been saying this for a long time now.
|
| Modern universities are a mix of two contradictory ideas.
| It's a place for "higher learning"; trying to fit the same
| role as institutions from hundreds of years ago where
| academic learning was much rarer and was fitted for the
| aristocracy. While simultaneously being something that you
| need for a job to make money. Oh, and also the people doing
| the teaching are more interested in their research than
| actually teaching. Forget teachers putting in 100% of their
| effort into teaching and making sure people really get the
| material (here's some slides the T.A. made, deal with it),
| you're lucky if a professor is a half-way decent orator.
|
| There are so many better ways to get different kinds of
| education, particularly for humanities. There are books,
| online videos, etc. that provide a better education on
| writing, philosophy, etc. than what a single professor
| charging thousands of dollars can provide.
| lumost wrote:
| From what I understand, a top-notch professor of
| philosophy at a first-tier university will teach 1-2
| classes per semester to 300ish students per class for
| which they will earn no more than 300k per year (
| although typically 3-6x less ).
|
| This works out to roughly $250 per student per semester.
| It's difficult to price the work of T.As as they are
| often students themselves, but assuming each student
| requires an average of 2 hours per week of dedicated
| grading/tutoring time, then at $20/hr the total cost of
| providing a first tier class should be $730 dollars.
|
| This number is roughly 1/3rd to 1/2 the cost of a class
| at a community college, 1/6th of the effective cost per
| class for UMass Amherst, and roughly 1/10th the effective
| price per class of MIT.
|
| I can assure you that the lecturer at your community
| college is not making 300k either. But this calculation
| does show that most of the tuition costs do not end up in
| the hands of the teaching staff, and that providing a
| first rate education could be done for an order of
| magnitude lower cost than current first tier universities
| charge.
|
| Or hell, offer professors 1 million per year and still
| charge 1/3rd the price of MIT.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| I started tutoring halfway through grad school to
| supplement my income. It was such easy money that it
| prompted me to do a similar calculation, based on my own
| observed income and the public salaries of professors at
| the university. This was at UCLA, a highly ranked school
| for math PhD's, but for which very few profs were making
| anywhere close to 300k.
|
| This epiphany acted as a catalyst for me to leave
| academia.
| wbl wrote:
| Many of the professors I admired were top notch
| researches as well as great teachers. They go together
| more often then not.
| dls2016 wrote:
| While I disagree with your framing (only slightly), it has
| historically been the case that university is where the upper
| class spends their early 20s with the content of the education
| not _really_ having a bearing on the direction of the students'
| lives. I think we've done a pretty good job duplicating this
| model for the masses! Even down to the alternate justice model
| inside most universities. Perpetrate a drug or sexual crime? No
| big deal, just switch schools and start over!
|
| Takes a lot of admins to recreate the upper class bubble for
| the poors.
|
| I can't really blame people for wanting this security for their
| children. Ultimately I don't think it will change until (at
| least in the US) we address things like universal healthcare,
| justice system reform and maybe even a UBI.
| andreilys wrote:
| _Even down to the alternate justice model inside most
| universities. Perpetrate a drug or sexual crime? No big deal,
| just switch schools and start over!_
|
| Except when the police is involved which should be any time
| the law is broken. You make it seem like colleges are their
| own oasis of law and order.
| dls2016 wrote:
| I was trying to be factual with a little sarcastic flair.
| My personal belief is that there shouldn't be an alternate
| justice system within the university.
| pasttense01 wrote:
| There should be an alternate justice system for academic
| crimes such as cheating.
| ficklepickle wrote:
| Unless you are Brock Turner-esque, in which case "20
| minutes of fun" shouldn't ruin your whole life.
| whymauri wrote:
| Yeah, it's actually funny that the GP's characterization is
| more aligned with the historical/ancient function of colleges
| and universities than the current one. For many decades at a
| time, you could characterize the student body of legendary
| schools like Oxford as "Bands of bored and inebriated wealthy
| teenagers."
|
| For the best example, look no further than the St.
| Scholastica Day Riots, which started with a drunk angry
| scholar and escalated into a mob riot with nearly 100
| casualties. [0] When not rioting against the villagers,
| Oxford scholars in the 13th and 14th century were prone to
| riot amongst themselves.
|
| Similar disagreements in the past culminated in lynchings and
| led to the founding of the University of Cambridge (to avoid
| more bloodshed from angry villagers, but also in part to
| avoid accountability for other kerfuffles). So yeah, wealthy
| teenager daycare with education on the side is nothing new.
|
| Edit: fixed a few historical inaccuracies, I mixed a few
| events in my head.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Scholastica_Day_riot
| [deleted]
| proc0 wrote:
| The end game of higher education is to become churches, recruit
| followers, and teach a religion. It even includes original sin.
| foldr wrote:
| > regular events on the currently hot social justice topics.
|
| This is a cheap shot and totally inaccurate. Do you really
| think UK universities are closing their maths departments so
| that they can spend more on the humanities?
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Some people will only be happy when anything resembling a
| left-wing point of view is removed from education and the
| media.
|
| Some of the "ism" culture war teaching in academia is indeed
| trite and silly.
|
| But it's far less silly than Fox News and the entire right-
| wing media machinery - which most recently somehow managed to
| persuade tens of millions of Americans that a valid election
| was stolen, that Covid is a hoax, and attacking your own
| political representatives is a valid expression of democracy.
|
| Honestly, compared to that having to pay attention to
| pronouns or learn something about black history is a complete
| non-issue.
| ficklepickle wrote:
| That reminds me of my favorite saying: "-isms make schisms"
|
| I heard it from a Rastafarian in a documentary and I have
| cherished it ever since.
| walkedaway wrote:
| Not sure how things are in the UK, but in the US, this is
| pretty much spot on. You'll see all sorts of curriculum pop
| up from grade school through universities to "teach" the SJW
| topic du jour. If Europe hasn't gone in this direction, well,
| that's probably why Europeans are so much better educated
| than Americans.
|
| It's gone so far that the SF school board is more worried
| about names of their schools named after American greats than
| they are re-opening schools (which have been closed in
| California since March).
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/san-francisco-mayor-
| london...
| foldr wrote:
| Isn't this just a generic rant about so-called SJWs etc.
| etc.? I can assure you that US universities aren't
| defunding or closing their math departments in order to add
| more humanities courses about hot social issues. You may
| not like what some professors choose to teach, but a quick
| glance at the numbers will show you that, if anything,
| everyone else is being sacrificed on the altar of STEM, not
| vice versa.
|
| Your second paragraph is about schools, not universities,
| and I can't see how it's at all relevant to this
| discussion.
| imtringued wrote:
| If maths departments have trouble retaining students then
| yes, absolutely.
| foldr wrote:
| You really think the money saved is going to the
| humanities? Could you provide one example of this actually
| happening?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| No, but this is the kind of stuff that can keep students busy
| and not asking whether they get their money's worth. A very
| efficient distraction.
| foldr wrote:
| Students wanting to get their money's worth is exactly the
| root cause of this. Trust me, British Universities are
| bending over backwards to give students what they want. If
| you've been anywhere near a British University you'd know
| how ridiculous it is to suggest that the staff are somehow
| secretly organizing BLM protests (??) as part of a plan to
| stop students noticing how much money they're spending (??)
| throwaways885 wrote:
| The universities should cut their losses then, and tell
| students to go somewhere else. Part of the issue is
| placating every whim of students, focusing on the fluff
| and not on the teaching.
| foldr wrote:
| I fully agree. It turns out that there are long-term
| costs to giving 18 year olds everything they think that
| they want for your short-term financial gain.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I noticed the general bending over backwards and I think
| the various political activities are a part of that. But
| you do not have to secretly organize X to benefit from
| it. You can just let the river flow and float on it. It
| is safe, non-controversial and does not require much
| effort.
| foldr wrote:
| Universities have been centers of protest for a long
| time, and extracurricular stuff has always been a major
| component of what attracts students. I don't really see
| much connection between this and the closing of the maths
| department at the University of Leicester. Students these
| days are very career focused, and research is funded
| based on "impact". These are the driving forces. The
| image of the student who cares more about radical
| politics than learning anything or finding a job is from
| the 1960s, not the 2020s.
|
| I've been in plenty of meetings where we tried to make
| students happier, and I can assure you that it's all by
| boring means such as inflating grades and reducing
| workloads (and indeed by more worthy and less cynical
| means from time to time). Politics on campus gets a lot
| of press coverage, but it's a marginal issue in terms of
| student satisfaction.
| GrantZvolsky wrote:
| Having studied both in Prague and the UK I can attest that
| British students are getting their money's worth of leisure
| and luxury. An interesting side effect is that the same
| facilities enjoyed by the largely native undergraduate
| students attract foreign nationals who made up 54% of the
| postgraduate and 49% of the doctoral student population in
| 2018/2019, and on whom Britain depends for staying
| competitive in this local optimum of an education system.
|
| https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-
| briefings/cbp-...
| mistersquid wrote:
| > Reading that administrators actually outnumber teaching staff
| at some American universities today
|
| This is an issue in the US, but it is worth noting this
| particular administrative maneuver is at University of
| Leicester which is in the UK. [0]
|
| [0] https://le.ac.uk/about
| cloudedcordial wrote:
| > provide the students with leisure, varsity sports and regular
| events on the currently hot social justice topics.
|
| It's already happening. I went to a Canadian university. The
| marketing material says the school wanted to give the students
| a "great student experience". What's great student experience?
| The glossy pamphlets shows varsity sports facilities, bright
| lecture halls and students hanging out in residences.
| jancsika wrote:
| > events on the currently hot social justice topics.
|
| Namespace collision detected:
|
| 1. a lecture series or seminar by a researcher specializing in
| social justice movements, civil rights leaders, abolitionists,
| etc. Possibly focusing on insights from newly discovered
| primary documents.
|
| 2. events hosted by any political college organization whose
| participants may be painted with the derisive term "social
| justice warrior"
|
| Definition #1 isn't an edge case-- most universities are chock
| full of such events and seminars. Shit like this: a linguist
| who was tasked with helping a Northern California tribe fill in
| the blanks in the documentation of their dead language so they
| could revive it. If your curiosity isn't peaked by that concept
| and it's associated practical challenges and sets of choices,
| I'm not sure what you're doing on HN.
|
| Definition #2 is like HN's version of cheating celebrity
| stories in the Enquirer. If you wanted to spend the rest of
| your life enumerating each case, you certainly wouldn't run out
| of bona fide material. But if _all_ you talk about 99% of the
| time is that-- to the extent that you forget definition #1 even
| exists-- you have to admit at least _part_ of your outrage is
| due not to your own free will but due to people clicking upvote
| buttons as if nudging trays of junk food close to where you 're
| sitting.
|
| Edit: typo
| laretluval wrote:
| Which of those do you think is more likely to draw a large
| audience? That's the one that will be more common.
| jancsika wrote:
| Quick digression followed by rank speculation, but I think
| it will be useful--
|
| What draws the largest general audience at colleges are
| sports.
|
| It would be reasonable if many HN posters wanted to
| critique college sports fans for diverting funds and energy
| from more important scholarly pursuits. It would be
| reasonable, if a bit odd, for them to do this by
| sarcastically nicknaming college sports fans, "Einsteins."
|
| It would be understandable if HN posters extended the
| sarcastic nickname "Einstein" to other domains to target
| people who ruin that domain by spamming it with
| superficial, loud-mouthed, low-effort pursuits.
|
| It would not be reasonable, understandable nor healthy if a
| critical mass of HN posters did this without knowing a) who
| Einstein is, b) the obvious fact that the nickname is being
| used sarcastically, and c) an entire department in every
| major college is concerned with an intellectual pursuit of
| extending the work that Einstein started. After all,
| hackers are supposed to understand the systems they hack!
|
| Anyway, if this were the case then anyone with even a
| passing interest in impugning the reputation of Einstein
| himself could then leverage that ignorance to do so.
|
| It's my rank speculation that "social justice" to a
| critical mass of HN'ers has become something of a
| backformation from "social justice warrior." E.g., an
| ignorant lurker reads a snippet about some historical
| figure from a social justice movement (or just a topic
| tangentially related to a social justice movement from the
| past), feels outrage over the superficiality and arrogance
| of SJW's, and unconsciously applies those same feels to
| whatever the conversation happens to be about.
|
| This happens all the time with memes-- e.g., Tim and Eric
| make a convincing "Free Real Estate" infomercial parody,
| parody becomes a meme, Tim shows up in a film, and
| Redditors mock him: "Hey, it's that Free Real Estate
| huckster guy!"
| skindoe wrote:
| > a lecture series or seminar by a researcher specializing in
| social justice movements, civil rights leaders,
| abolitionists, etc. Possibly focusing on insights from newly
| discovered primary documents.
|
| "Newly discovered primary documents" something makes me doubt
| that this is what the professors are looking into...
| [deleted]
| hntrader wrote:
| The part about synergy between faculties is accurate. Having
| strong pure math academics helps out the various applied math
| departments in indirect ways that I've seen.
|
| This is a shame. Pure math is a discipline with the most out of
| whack discrepancy between public positive externality and private
| benefit, even more than in physics. Pure math discoveries often
| have unexpected downstream benefits decades later as they
| percolate slowly into applied domains in unexpected ways, and its
| discoverers get little credit and no financial reward. Terence
| Tao should be getting paid in the millions for his work.
| canjobear wrote:
| You can look up the salary of any UC employee here.
| https://ucannualwage.ucop.edu/wage/
|
| Yes, Terence Tao is doing pretty well.
| bzbarsky wrote:
| Just looking at UCLA employees sorted by gross pay is
| interesting; Tao ends up around #192 on the list. Mostly due
| to the medical school, plus some people with titles like
| "INTERCOL ATH HEAD COACH EX" and "INTERCOL ATH COACH AST EX".
|
| The top 3 (and #5) are all "HEAD COACH".
| soVeryTired wrote:
| He won the breakthrough prize, so he literally has been paid
| millions.
| hntrader wrote:
| I meant annual comp, but yes that's a good step
| mhh__ wrote:
| Tao is arguably one of the most famous mathematicians on earth,
| I'm pretty sure he's on a decent salary.
| hntrader wrote:
| He's on about 500k/year. It's not enough. That's a not
| uncommon total package for a reasonably experienced SV
| engineer, it's not fitting for one of the foremost pure
| mathematicians of our generation. It's because most of his
| output is positive externality, his employer capturing little
| of his value creation except for the prestige & teaching
| output, which must be less than 10% of his current value
| proposition to society.
| motohagiography wrote:
| A thought experiment that has a surprising amount of predictive
| power is to view the universities as a system of single-party
| rule on the scale of the CCP, where they vie for power internally
| among themselves, and use the real economy to fund their
| effective system of sinecures.
|
| Viewed this way, it is purging principled and quantitative
| thinkers because they can't keep them on as a risk for where the
| party is going. Straight out of sci-fi, but sometimes experiments
| can be illuminating.
| tgb wrote:
| You're suggesting that the math department is out of line with
| the universities propaganda? Are you aware that they're also
| axing humanities departments? They're not axing applied science
| departments. Your "experiment" doesn't really match reality.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Are the universities a de-facto one party system? No. Does
| their aggregate behaviour resemble one? More often than you'd
| expect.
|
| The change from, "a university should produce thoughtful and
| well rounded citizens and leaders to grow our society," to,
| "a university should produce activists to pose as experts and
| seize the means of production," has happened within the span
| of a single career cohort. I'd say that math itself isn't the
| target, but it does seem to have found itself in the way.
| ptero wrote:
| I do not know the details of this case, but universities are
| opening new departments, centers and programs all the time. There
| needs to be some mechanism for reallocation rather than just
| growth.
|
| Some breadth is always needed, but strength is even more critical
| for _research_. Having two universities, one with a center of
| excellency, say in physics one in ancient history is better than
| two mediocre research programs in each.
|
| I think this has nothing to do with teaching mathematics --
| classes will still be taught, this is about their research
| program. My 2c.
| mettamage wrote:
| Amazing marketing fodder for any startup that wants to create a
| better educational system.
|
| Also, they should read A Mathematician's Apology (and the irony
| that came when Hardy's work became applicable :P)
|
| Pure math has brought so many amazing things: culture,
| intellectualism and straight up useful technology. For a
| university to ditch that means to me they're not a university.
| alfl wrote:
| So if I'm a hiring manager looking at someone with a recent
| degree from University of Leicester I have to discount their math
| abilities.
|
| Their alumni should complain that the administration is harming
| the value of their credentials.
| bzbarsky wrote:
| > I have to discount their math abilities.
|
| Do you? The implication that "applied math" doesn't involve
| math abilities is an interesting one, but doesn't have bearing
| on reality. There is a good bit of interesting, and quite
| challenging, applied mathematics going on out there. Including
| large chunks of what we usually call "computer science".
|
| If I'm a hiring manager hiring for a position where
| quantitative skills matter, hiring someone who did applied math
| at a high level is absolutely something I would look for.
| alfl wrote:
| Totally fair. Depends on the problem space you're hiring for.
|
| I'm still gonna check though :)
| kleiba wrote:
| I recently read Dijkstra's "On the fact that the Atlantic Ocean
| has two sides". [1] In vast parts, it's not much more than mildly
| disguised US-bashing (Dijkstra was always a grumpy old man) but
| that's not what caught my eye. What did was the fact that he
| describes the US research landscape as a system that orients
| itself around short-term projects and industry desires. Dijkstra
| clearly expresses his contempt for this approach over what he
| claims to be the European way: long-term thinking and research
| done for research's sake.
|
| That paper was written in 1982
|
| Fast forward ~40 years, and the presumed US model _is exactly_
| the way research funding works all across Europe today. Jumping
| from one project to the next, always hoping that one of your next
| proposals will receive funding, or you 're out of a job. Your
| project proposal has a weak "exploitation" section? Well, goodbye
| proposal then! Universities are thought of as nothing more than
| R&D departments and providers of new young hires for the economic
| sector.
|
| It's only consequential then to axe such "useless" disciplines as
| pure mathematics.
|
| This is a scandal.
|
| --
|
| Edit: these news from last September fit perfectly into the
| picture [2]:
|
| _The European Union's next research programme is likely to have
| a greater emphasis on funding for applied research, experts have
| warned, as universities were told to put pressure on politicians
| to increase the budget. [...]_
|
| _In July, EU leaders agreed to spend EUR80.9 billion (PS72.9
| billion) on Horizon Europe, EUR13.5 billion less than was hoped
| for in May._
|
| However, regarding the budget cut, keep in mind the costs
| incurred by the COVID19 pandemic.
|
| --
|
| [1]
| https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/E...
|
| [2] https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/horizon-europe-
| wil...
| dandanua wrote:
| It looks like our civilization has passed its peak and now
| bouncing back to medieval ages.
| lmilcin wrote:
| If you read historic books you will notice this sentiment has
| been present almost constantly since antiquity.
|
| The fact is you get current state with all its gory details
| but the past with bad parts filtered out.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It also frequently happens, and there are many ulti
| century-long stretches of time in various places in the
| world from which we have virtually no literature or
| historical record, not even enough to verify basic facts
| like what cities were named or where they were located.
| Sometimes this is because there was virtually nothing being
| written at the time that anyone thought worth preserving,
| or because movements, marauders, armies, or some pogrom
| burned it all and forced people not to discuss the contents
| on pain of death.
|
| Alarm about the end of civilization is wrong far more often
| than it is right, but it is eventually right. Societies
| just recover over time. I'm afraid we've reached the level
| of technological sophistication that it might be hard to
| avoid putting a real end to it next time. Our current
| situation is materially different due to our machines.
| dandanua wrote:
| Maybe, but something is constantly changing in the worrying
| direction. Humans are becoming slaves of the tools they
| build, not vice versa. Our biological abilities fade away
| in the presence of technological progress. People may
| fantasy about some cyberpank future, but I have doubts
| about it. Simpler organisms can't control what is superior
| to them. And I'm pretty sure general AI is a real thing, at
| least in the future. So, the confrontation between humans
| as biological species and tech progress is quite
| justifiable.
| [deleted]
| Lio wrote:
| Which is ironic considering that Medieval Literature, and
| Chaucer in particular, is one of the other things the
| University of Leicester were talking about getting rid of.
| yorwba wrote:
| Fortunately, a university axing Chaucer is not going to end
| him, not only because he's already dead, but also because
| he's been dead for long enough that you can just read his
| works online for free, no university required:
| https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Geoffrey_Chaucer
| martin-t wrote:
| Most people are reactive, not proactive.
|
| Proactive people look at the big picture, search for facts
| instead of opinions, watch for trends in data and make
| decisions based on those.
|
| Reactive people just go with the flow until some big event
| happens, then maybe sometimes things change.
|
| Remember, civilization needs constant effort to maintain so
| by default things are getting slightly worse over time. If
| there's enough proactive people for upkeep, it stays the same
| or even gets better. If not, things keep getting worse until
| something sufficiently bad happens, then outrage follows and
| reactive people spring into action - e.g. protests or
| outright revolutions depending on how bad things were allowed
| to become.
|
| When things are good (or at least good enough) for a long
| time, less and less people see the need to be proactive...
| cm2187 wrote:
| You still have to keep in mind that something like 90% of the
| technological advances of the XX century were born in US labs.
| So it's not that broken.
| stablenode wrote:
| cm2187: I wonder if you realize that a significant factor in
| the US scientific prowess is a certain event in the XX
| century history of Europe which forced a huge number of
| scientists to move to the US because they weren't 'Aryan
| enough'. After said XX century event another wave of
| scientists arrived (or were brought) to the US, only these
| were 'quite Aryan' but facing career oblivion in Europe due
| to their past political associations. One way or another, a
| critical mass of excellent researchers ended up in the US and
| became a technological asset that no other country could
| frankly match or even get close, solidifying its
| technological preeminence for the rest of the century.
| Obviously, this wouldn't have been possible without generous
| US funding for science as well (the economy being another
| area where the US has dominated the XX century).
|
| Also, '90%' sounds suspiciously like a number you produced
| from deep within your colon.
| cm2187 wrote:
| On your first point, it is certainly the case that many
| scientists came from abroad, and in fact that is still the
| case today, you don't need Nazi persecutions for that. But
| we are talking about whether the academic system produces
| game changing research, not where the researchers were born
| (in fact if anything,the fact that people are attracted by
| this model is a testimony to its effectiveness).
|
| As for the 90%, agree, that's where I found that number.
| But do the exercise of listing all the major technological
| advances you can think of that mattered on the XX century,
| and I think you will likely end up close to that.
| cambalache wrote:
| In Physics the 2 giant contributions from the XX century
| (Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity) were developed
| in Europe.
|
| In Mathematics the big highlights of the XX century: the
| Hilbert Program, the Bourbaki group, computability,the
| FLT solution were mainly made outside the US.
|
| First satellite? First man in space? USSR
|
| Europe was a big contributor to the first computers:
| Colossus, Zuse's Z2.
|
| The Germans were pioneers in rocketry and ballistics as
| it is sadly very well known by the rest of the work.
|
| In Biology: Watson, Crick, Monod,Ian Wilmut,Maynar-Smith
| made fantastic and foundational contributions
|
| Medicine? Antibiotics,discovery of tetanus vaccine,
| immunological agents, vitamins, all made outside of the
| US.
|
| That's not to say that American has not make fantastic
| contributions, The Apollo program, the invention of the
| transistor, the invention of the Internet are highlights
| of American ingenuity and glorious gifts to the rest of
| the world.
|
| But pretending that all good science is made only in the
| US and the rest of the world in some sort of scientific
| backwater is just a sad indictment of the American
| educational system that formed you.
| stablenode wrote:
| What exactly constitutes a 'major technological advance'?
| If we're counting Turing Awards by university
| affiliation, then I believe 90% is probably a good
| estimate for the US share (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
| List_of_Turing_Award_laureates...). If we're counting
| Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry and Medicine, it
| suddenly becomes less clear why this should be true (http
| s://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_uni.
| ..), and if we're counting the number of Fields Medals
| (the most relevant award given the subject of the post),
| the numbers seem to suggest that the US contribution to
| pure mathematics is not as dominant as you might imagine:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Fields_Medal_winner
| s_b...
|
| In any event, I think this is all getting rather silly. I
| was simply making the point that historically science in
| the US has benefited tremendously from having a large
| number of capable people that were _trained_ within a
| different system. Where they were born is absolutely
| irrelevant. A certain W. von Braun was indeed an
| American, as were his 'major technological advances'
| that many in the US are rightly proud of, but he was very
| much a product of German science (I hope you don't find
| this point controversial).
| znpy wrote:
| I upvoted for the finesse of your last line.
| kleiba wrote:
| Well, if technological advances is the only thing you care
| for, sure, then go ahead and get rid of stuff like pure
| maths.
|
| However, are you sure that these advances would not have been
| made if the US had a different system? Like I argued before,
| Europe has pretty much copied the system by now but I don't
| see much in terms of catching up. Take A.I., for instance:
| completely dominated by the U.S. and China. Europe?
|
| Like in many things in life, copying someone else's
| successful model is by no means a guarantee that you're going
| to be successful too. Why? Because your circumstances are
| usually completely different from whatever you're copying.
| turbonaut wrote:
| > Take A.I., for instance: completely dominated by the U.S.
| and China. Europe?
|
| DeepMind?
| kleiba wrote:
| Alphabet is not a university.
| quonn wrote:
| Alphabet bought it. But it's a direct result of
| university research with the same people. Just check the
| field of reinforcement learning.
| kleiba wrote:
| True, but a singular example does not save the continent.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| The first place Facebook opened an AI research centre was
| Paris.
|
| They certainly didn't pick it for the food ;)
|
| I think if you look at where the researchers are, Europe
| does really well. As per usual though, this is poorly
| commercialised.
| thethought wrote:
| In France software companies classify software
| development as R&d which I think has major tax upside for
| US companies with RD in France.
| potamic wrote:
| Sadly it's the same in software these days. I've seen places
| where the business teams outnumber the development teams. It's
| such a clusterfuck with everyone trying to steer the direction
| their way, when only so much can be built. Of course, when it
| comes to hiring more devs, "we don't have the budget for it".
| melomal wrote:
| Patched up software with increasing technical debt is how a
| business should be run, haven't you heard? Oh and in the mean
| time get more sales, create immediate displeasure and load up
| the outsourced customer support with angry clients. /s
| agumonkey wrote:
| The opposite is also true. I read a book about early
| electricity discoveries. People in Europe were all about the
| deep end theories. America.. pragmatism reigned supreme. As
| long as you can make something out of phenomenon you're good to
| go. The book said that by the time Edison made a light bulb,
| European academics were still debating unproven theories.
| frobozz wrote:
| That book was bunk.
|
| By the time Edison made a light bulb, incandescent light had
| been initially demonstrated by Davy 70 years beforehand, and
| shown to practical by Lindsay 35 years after that.
|
| Jobard, de la Rue, and de Moleyns had made experimental light
| bulbs 40 years beforehand, Lodygin had held a patent for 5
| years.
|
| Most crucially, Swan's lightbulbs had been lighting Mosley
| Street for six months. Carbon arc lights (also shown by Davy
| early in the 1800s) having been in commercial use for some
| time before that.
|
| The main invention that made light bulbs practically viable
| was the improved vacuum pumps of the 1870s, which none of
| these people lay claim to. This is what led to the rapid
| development of incandescent light in the 1880s.
| cambalache wrote:
| You should read better researched books
| morelisp wrote:
| On the other hand, by the time Europeans made the WWW,
| American capitalists were still trying to figure out how to
| micromonetize resource transclusion.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Then www rose in the US while France was having meetings
| about what protocol to use for the minitel. It's and odd
| pattern.
| antihero wrote:
| It's almost as if a capitalist system rewards people who seek
| dollar signs instead of real progress, and is antithetical to
| what is genuine and good. Progress is merely a side-effect of
| capitalism. If people can gain capital without it, they will.
| anticristi wrote:
| I agree with you analysis, but is this necessarily bad (or
| rather, is all of this bad)?
|
| As a young researcher, my peers and I already noticed the
| "customer-ification" of academia. Taxpayers are investigating
| in academia, either via tuition fees or research grants, and
| expect to see returns: Either more jobs, more competitive
| national economy or a better life.
|
| So far so good. Unfortunately, too much "customer-ification"
| leads to job insecurity for more junior academic members and
| kills "moonshots". However, without "customer-ification" the
| system ends up with dinasors that do research "for fun" on
| taxpayer's money, with no real return.
|
| Now, I'm unsure how much "customer-ification" is healthy. I
| would argue that both too little and too much hurt. I was
| fortunate enough to see some of my more junior peers striving
| with "just the right" amount: They managed to get themselves on
| R&D boards of companies, yet do research on fundamental
| theories. Think "to truly make airbags reliable, we need a
| theory on controlling non-linear systems of type X".
|
| I'm not sure what happened in the case debated here, but I
| genuinely hope that the departments that are under thread have
| some evidence for their usefulness (e.g. public outreach for
| medieval literature, joint-articles for pure math).
| woofie11 wrote:
| Well, the underlying problem is high tuition and high faculty
| salaries. Faculty used to be like a monastery, where scholars
| could live a simple life to nerd in their topic of nerdhood.
|
| Now, my alma mater pays high-tooting faculty nearly a
| megabuck, pays typical faculty $180k, has $200 million
| building projects, yachts, and what-not. Tuition went up
| multifold too.
|
| I'm more than happy to pay a bunch of nerds $60k per year to
| have lifetime jobs to sit around and nerd, but if my taxpayer
| dollars are paying for that monstrosity, it better darned
| well deliver economic value too.
| mplanchard wrote:
| Not sure where you went to school, but this definitely
| isn't the case everywhere. I went to a state school, and
| freshly minted faculty were making 60-80k, while folks with
| tenure were in the 100-125K range. The only people making
| salaries like you describe were higher level administrators
| and of course the football coach.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| What nerd with intellect would work as a professor if they
| could earn the significantly more money working for a hedge
| fund, FAANG, etc? Genuine question. The current academic
| hopeful spends their 20s in near-poverty level stipends and
| are more likely than not to never get a professorship as it
| is. If they did all that for 60k/yr why would they even
| bother?
|
| (Additionally I don't know if it applies here, but often
| that money to build buildings is with conditions- ie."you
| have to use this money to build a building a name it after
| me".)
| woofie11 wrote:
| Well, let's skip the twenties part. That's a relic of the
| hyper-competitive academic system. Normality is you start
| college at 17/18, finish college around age 21/22, and
| finish a Ph.D around 26. At that point, you take an
| academic job if you want one and appear qualified. You
| spend 7 years having fun as an assistant prof, doing what
| you love, and then, unless you've messed up, you have
| tenure.
|
| You don't have a string of low-paid abusive post-docs,
| research scientist positions, and what not. And assistant
| prof'ing is fun, not publish-or-perish and grant writing;
| you do research and write (papers, not massive numbers of
| grant applications). Unless you mess up, you make tenure.
|
| The flip side is you get paid a third of industry.
|
| That pretty much describes academia when my advisor got a
| job.
|
| As you pointed out, $60k bring competition down a lot. At
| that point, you're no longer competing with hedge funds
| and FAANG. And it brings job supply up; if you pay $60k,
| at current funding rates, you'll have no shortage of
| jobs.
|
| With that sane system, which we DID once have, lots of
| people factually DID take that path. The calculus isn't
| hard:
|
| 1) Hate my life 40 hours per week at FAANG/hedge
| fund/etc. so I can afford to do what I love
|
| 2) Drive a beat-up old subcompact and spend 80 hours per
| week doing what I love with a guaranteed (low-paying,
| stable) job for the rest of my life.
|
| It's not rocket science. Lots of people pick #2. I don't
| much care if I have $200/plate food, a mansion, business
| class flights, and a sports car. I'm okay with McD's
| salads, cooking, camping trips, and a bicycle (I DO care
| about financial stress -- risk of losing a mortgage --
| but stability takes that away). Splitting time between
| intellectual pursuits and family? That's awesome. Doing
| it in a community of like-minded people? Even more so.
| Lots of people made that same choice before elite
| academia became big $$$, and my math friends who bring in
| $1 million/year at hedge funds did so because they
| couldn't find academic jobs.
|
| Think of it this way: You know that nerd who spends their
| days building Lego sets? There are plenty of nerds who
| want to code up open source, explore the secrets of
| physics, doing theoretical math, or working out new
| models for government. All you need to do is provide
| stability and room to focus. If you give tenured
| positions which cover basic housing, food, and clothing,
| and give a sane process to get there, you'll have no
| shortage of candidates.
| kleiba wrote:
| _Well, let 's skip the twenties part. That's a relic of
| the hyper-competitive academic system. Normality is you
| start college at 17/18, finish college around age 21/22,
| and finish a Ph.D around 26. At that point, you take an
| academic job if you want one and appear qualified. You
| spend 7 years having fun as an assistant prof, doing what
| you love, and then, unless you've messed up, you have
| tenure._
|
| And now the German version of this tale:
|
| You finish high school with 18/19 get your master's
| degree with 23/24. Then you get a PhD position but
| because it's tied to a three-year project with third-
| party funding, you're also expected to do project work
| that does not contribute to your thesis at all. You're
| only starting out in the business, though, so you're
| happy to help!
|
| Then, three years later, the project is finished but your
| thesis is nowhere near that. Now, choose your own
| adventure:
|
| 1) Luckily, your supervisor can hire you using his own
| budget. That's nice, almost no strings attached. Now you
| can really focus on finishing up your thesis.
|
| 2) Luckily, there's another project that has just started
| and that you can work on now. You're a bit unsure,
| though: when the first project was up, no-one thanked you
| for your work, your supervisor was just surprised about
| the state of your thesis. Should you do that again?
| What's more, the new project has nothing to do with the
| old project, let alone with the topic of your thesis.
| Because you really have no other option, you agree to do
| it - still better than nothing.
|
| Which brings us to the next option:
|
| 3) Your supervisor unfortunately has no funds to extend
| your contract. But since you've already invested so much
| work and you like the idea of a PhD, you apply for
| unemployment support through the government and hope that
| you can finish everything within a year. Later, you're
| gonna call this period an "independently funded research
| scholarship" on you CV.
|
| But all good things come to an end: finally, after much
| hardship, you graduate! Wow!
|
| And you even find a post-doc position in some other town!
| Great. You don't mind a change of scenery! Now you're
| rolling!
|
| And you're good at your job. You feel good. Get lots of
| papers accepted.
|
| But your contract ends after two years. Luckily, there is
| another post-doc position in some other town! Great!
| You're not so keen on moving again but hey, your new
| partner doesn't mind a change of scenery.
|
| And you're still pretty good at your job. You kind of
| start feeling a bit disillusioned with your field though:
| it seems like all the research published these days is
| just application-driven -- not what once pulled you to
| the field. Oh, well, at least your job pays the rent.
|
| But your contract ends after two years. You consider
| applying for professor positions because in Germany,
| there is no middle ground really. But you have your
| doubts: are you really good enough? Besides, both you and
| your partner hate the idea of moving yet again: you just
| made new friends. But what can you do?
|
| None of your applications for a professor position go
| anywhere. So you go for a third post-doc. The move was
| really not that bad, as you were able to sell most of the
| old furniture. The new supervisor is great and you feel
| energized with a rediscovered love for the field.
|
| You don't get as many papers out as before even though
| you try. But somehow, you don't have as much time for
| actual research anymore, as you find yourself more and
| more tied up in administratrivia. You work long hours but
| only half of it is actually dedicated to research, and it
| shows in your output. Nevertheless, you like the working
| environment.
|
| But then your contract ends after two years. Your
| supervisor would love to keep you, he even has enough
| money in his budget for at least five years. But oh!
| Damn. There is a law in Germany that six years after your
| PhD, you cannot be hired on university budget anymore,
| unless it's a permanent position. And, well, sorry, the
| bad news is: universities don't hire on permanent
| contracts. Faculty, that is, they don't hire faculty -
| except professors. Administration, sure, they're
| permanent. Facility management, sure, they're permanent.
| Just the people doing the core task of a university
| (teaching and researching), sorry, no.
|
| You give a professor position one last try because there
| just happens to be an opening that sounds like it was
| just made for you. You fit it perfectly. And so do 9
| others. But there's only one position. You're all pretty
| much equally qualified, so who's going to get it? Will it
| be you?
|
| It doesn't matter because it's clear that nine folks will
| not get it.
|
| Nine people who's dream it has always been to be in
| research, who have invested a lot in making this dream a
| reality, who are completely qualified and very
| experienced will now have to go and do something else...
| while a new generation of young, blue-eyed, PhD students
| are ready for the same journey.
| medium_burrito wrote:
| Perhaps we can establish a nonprofit research institution
| where people can do research. There are whole towns for
| sale in various places, we could get one for free
| probably. Get an endowment together, a few million, that
| could pay for a bit of food and refurbishment. Brew beer
| or some sort of herbal liqueur, might cover some
| expenses.
| micheles wrote:
| It is more or less the same in Italy and in most European
| countries, it is not only Germany.
| woofie11 wrote:
| The really sad part of this journey is that most of those
| people, beyond youthful idealism, had no idea whether
| that dream was for them.
|
| Because there is very little mobility into academia, MANY
| people land on the wrong side of the pond. You can't try
| industry and go back. One more difference is that
| colleges once wanted people with decades industry
| experience, and many older people saw going back to teach
| young'uns as a way of giving back.
|
| It's not just older people. If you're in industry, and
| want to pursue a good idea for 5 years where you don't
| have elbowroom, or in academia and want to try to
| commercialize something, you break your academic track.
| It's possible with tenure, but I find many tenured
| academics distinctly underimpressive by the point they've
| gone through decades of abuse to get there....
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Thank you for the perspective from Germany. I wonder,
| should we read the above with "I" in place of "you"? Is
| this your personal experience? If so, what is the final
| outcome? Or is that nont known yet?
| kleiba wrote:
| If you mean, is the above an excerpt from my
| autobiography, then no. :-)
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| tl;dr: financial stability suffices to ensure academic
| freedom; rich financial rewards are not necessary.
| woofie11 wrote:
| <--- Perfect summary.
| Grimm1 wrote:
| There is more to life than money is the simple answer.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > Genuine question.
|
| I know a handful of faculty at top universities (MIT,
| Stanford, Berkeley, etc). At least one did a year at a
| FAANG company prior to starting so it isn't like they
| don't know better. They are paid well enough and don't
| need 400k salaries. They love their research topic and
| love the freedom to work on the topics they care most
| about. They love mentoring students specifically. They
| don't care about software engineering as a discipline and
| would rather spend time learning other things. They (most
| of them) like teaching. They like being part of a
| research community.
| anticristi wrote:
| Nicely put. Some professors want monastery-level
| accountability with industry-level salary. Have the cake
| and eat it.
| kleiba wrote:
| I'd say those are the minority - for most academics,
| doing the research is the most important thing, and
| salary second, or else, the CS departments of this world
| would be empty.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| > Now, my alma mater pays high-tooting faculty nearly a
| megabuck, pays typical faculty $180k, has $200 million
| building projects, yachts, and what-not.
|
| This is not relevant to the UK. Faculty do not get paid
| anywhere near this. They do not get paid lawyer or doctor
| money either, for the UK. Economics faculty who move from
| the UK to the US will come close to doubling their salary,
| as a lower bound.
| bombcar wrote:
| To be fair to the UK/EU you'd need to compare total
| compensation and factor in the social net in Europe.
| holbrad wrote:
| Even once you factor all of the that in, you receive far
| less money.
| kleiba wrote:
| I think you can safely say that for all of Europe.
| grumple wrote:
| If their math faculty is of similar quality to (or worse than)
| what we had at my top 25 university, they aren't going to lose
| much of value. I was a math major. Our math department was so bad
| - because the faculty was truly, magnificently inept at teaching
| - that our engineering school created their own versions of every
| required math class so the engineers could actually learn the
| required math.
| techbio wrote:
| Why not dirty up the math with some real world applications and
| you might have a provably winning system.
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