Why Give Billions to Universities?

Scuttlebutt
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You’re reading this right now on a device whose chips were an outgrowth of the ballistic missile industry of the 1950s and 1960s.

The tech was developed by American scientists who came from American universities funded by the government to do esoteric research in electronics and physics .

Many of those university professors left academia to join Bell Labs and other commercial laboratories exploiting the tech academia made available through basic research.

Without it the digital revolution would have occurred elsewhere. The USA is paramount as an economic power because in the 1980s the costly research that created the digital revolution was harnessed for economic development.

You’re reading this now because billions were spent then, in places like Stanford and CalTech.

You’re reading this now because in the 1980s a few pointy-headed elitist scientists in a place called DARPA created the Internet.

DARPA is a military think tank dedicated to taking basic research from universities and using it to defend the USA.

The scientists there are from prestigious universities which are funded at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars to complete the basic and advanced research to keep us one step ahead of our enemies, and to keep American industry in the vanguard of innovation.

The research is expensive because all the easy shit is done. 60 years ago it was all a matter of how do we make diodes and such smaller. Now we can make them out of a few atoms.

What universities are doing now is figuring how to make quantum computers. Sub-atomic structures. Orders of magnitude more difficult and therefore more expensive.

But whatever country who invents that tech will dominate the 21st century, just as our dominance in tech allowed us to dominate the last half of the last century.

So, you people who complain about the billions spent on universities: you wouldn’t be reading about it, or complaining about it here, unless billions and billions hadn’t been invested in those universities and scientists over the last 60 years.

Now explain to me again how you want the economy dominated by putting heads on Barbie dolls.

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“Dominate” is going to look a lot different in 2050 than it did in 1950 or 2000.

The problem is, the tech that will dominate the 21st Century, (probably AGI), is going to result in a majority of humans being made redundant. “Figuring out how to make quantum computers” is going to be achieved with the assistance of “AI” and used to further automate and make us redundant. It started with telling Coal miners to “Just learn to code” and now there are thousands of people with Computer Science Degrees at the butt of the same joke. It’s a sad news headline as blue collar workers are automated out of a job, or they are “holding up progress” when they stand up and fight back like the longshoremen did, but that doesn’t mean a hill of beans to a lot of Americans, until the white collar jobs like accounting, developing, and marketing start to go away.

Neither side of the aisle wants to come to the light and recognize we need Universal Basic Income and better social programs instead of arguing about what bathroom we can use or what type of reproductive organs you need to have to wear a dress and host a library event.

I think we are already well on the way to “dominate” the 21st century, the only people really competing on AI benchmarks are Americans. America is dumping massive amounts of money into AI Infrastructure like Project Star Gate- The real only missing piece is we need to get Nuclear energy on line in at the scale of China.

Bringing back manufacturing is just a palatable distraction to keep half the country mad about something while the 1% continues widen the gap, and charge everyone else a subscription fee for living.

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The debate is whether defunding universities will help or hurt American society.

IMO defunding universities is as moronic as defunding the police.

Defunding the police would just destabilize society.

Defunding universities guarantees torpedoing progress on scientific endeavors, because universities are the place scientists are trained in cutting edge research, which they then take to the private sector.

When I was a young man prostate cancer was a death sentence. I knew two men in the academy whose fathers were diagnosed with it. No cure. No treatment. Make out your will.

Now I know several men who had it and are walking around, fully healthy. It’s a dangerous disease, but one which you can be cured. All due to billions invested in university research.

There are other hideous diseases universities have been working to study and cure. Some of you reading this, or your loved ones, likely have one.

But now the bright lights of MAGA have convinced 25% of the public that all that medical research is bullshit.

Have cancer? Take ivermectin. Have ALS? Take ivermectin. Have Alzheimer’s? Double up the ivermectin.

That’s MAGA research for you.

So, shitcan all the ongoing medical studies. All the money Congress earmarked for university medical funding— that your representatives voted on for funding— well, Dear Felon is a king now so he can unilaterally shut it all down.

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Back in 2020 there was an article in Foreign Affairs that touched on the wrongs of starving government.
Free link
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/guest-pass/redeem/b31_HxtQmg0

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An aussie lecturer spoke up saying major universities in USA same like oz, 50% of the staff have nothing to do with lecturing so hence not doing research, they are there for woke agenda issues.

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Lecturers aren’t doing the research on a day to day basis as they lecturing. I’d advise anyone with an interest to tour the research department of any major research university. They schedule tours if you really want to see.

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Not the point of defunding.

Do a tour through the faculties with the most blue/green haired, body pierced, over tattooed, trans-worshipping, foul-mouthed critical theorist, Palestinian-flagged nincompoops on their staffs and you’ll wonder which planet you’re on.

Check out their classrooms and common ares littered with flags and posters of the evil inherent in the USA (oh and Israel) as they suck up the funds squeezed out of factory workers, shop assistants and clerks.

Take a wander through the supposedly disbanded DEI bureaucracies now renamed something like the “Creative Relationships Department” which haven’t changed one iota as they work to destroy America.

P.S. Much of that high tech stuff came from the space aliens who were happy to donate their superseded, ten thousand earth years ago, toys to keep the earthlings amused and fighting amongst each other. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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Coming from a guy who has never stepped a foot in an American university. The only time you visited the States was a long weekend a half-century ago.

Whatever you know of the States is what Fox tells you. You know, Fox. The news show that tells you NYC sucks. Even though they choose to broadcast from NYC. And all their commentators choose to live in NYC..

Like they don’t believe what they are telling you.

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When RFK Jr who is the current health secretary of the US says, " I don’t want to seem like I’m being evasive, but I don’t think people should be taking advice, medical advice, from me.”
Believe him

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The problem is that whatever we invent today at the cost of $$$ Trillions, is stolen by the China a few minutes later.

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Graduate student teaching assistants do the lecturing in undergrad courses while professors are doing research and writing journal articles and books.

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ahh yes in most cases
Uni funding is from their claims of research for the league tables.
A junior lecturer does 100% lecturing
As you go up the tree you do less lecturing but flag as research the rest of your time so the uni gets to claim they do lots of research.
Sure some wealthy unis might have 100% research but rare as the students go there to learn from these people.
Education is a business like any other especially in the USA and any other country where they are 100% gov owned and funded and broke.

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How about we get serious about cutting back the wasteful spending? I get it. You hate Trump. The alternative was Kamala so we won that one. Aside from hating everything he does, because you do. Even if he gets something right, he gets no credit. I digress…

How about the 37T debt? Yes I know. Trump added his share to it. I’m not going to debate the semantics and the whataboutisms because we all know they are ALL at fault. No one has the stones to do anything different than the status quo. No one is doing anything beyond talking about the debt. Except Trump. Hate him, call him names but he is doing something different. I know defunding these universities isn’t the answer but at least it’s the conversation now. The means to get there isn’t always positive. It is never easy but something has to change. By the way, all the tech that results from the research could be streamlined and not come only from blank checks. I was drilling in the 116.00 a barrel through the 23.00 a barrel days and the waste that was eliminated was good for everyone except maybe those involved in the sale of the excess shit.

Harris. Are you fucking kidding me?

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It doesn’t make him wrong about this though does it…?

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Not everybody is disappointed by the development in US academia:

Source: Bruker 100 millioner på å lokke forskere til Norge – møter kritikk

PS> There is an old Norwegian saying; “One’s death, another’s bread”

The Trump policy is also making foreign student, especially from China, wondering if studying in USA is worth it:

How many $$$ will it cost US Universities to loose foreign students?
Why are other countries spending $$$ to attract foreign students?

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The only one talking about her is you.

She is not the president.

The president is Trump.

You say:

But Trump’s budget is a massive increase to the debt. Who says so? Elon Musk for one, many Republicans in Congress, and Republican think tanks.

So when you say Trump is working on the debt issue I call bullshit. And Elon Musk agrees with me. We’re talking of trillions added to the budget, according to the CBO.

The way Clinton handled the debt issue is he made it a bipartisan priority. Worked over six months to get bipartisan goals done. It was a highly politicized time. But he got it done. The government as a whole balanced the budget.

He knew if he tried to make unilateral cuts he would get pushback from Congress and fail. So he did the difficult thing, cooperated with others, and pulled it off.

Trump is incapable of all that. All he’s capable of is performance art. If he was capable of more he could have convened a bipartisan commission to go through university spending line item by line item and review it all. It would take about six months and real work could have been done.

Much of the spending was allocated by Congress, by the public’s representatives. You don’t like it? Talk to your rep. It was allocated and approved by whoever was president at the time. It’s a democracy so no one gets everything they want.

Trump is not a king. When he unilaterally decides to torpedo budget items previously approved by Congress and president he sets himself up a a king, and it’s up to Congress and the Supreme Court to put him in his place.

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…

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Is Fox News in the room with us now?

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That’s kind of the point no??

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If hat is the point, wouldn’t that mean that the US students would have to pay more to cover the losses?
You didn’t address my next question;

PS> They would like academics and researchers from other countries to join too.

Maybe this will explain it?: