Harvard slashing PhD programs + layoffs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Harvard should live Within its means. Old fashioned word not familiar in Cambridge budget. Endowment is a Pool of thousands of restrictred funds but that frees up money for other areas that are not fully funded.

Science research grants are not charity. Grant money is exchanged for results.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Large organizations that have been around a long time sometimes need to tighten things up. Maybe they'll be better off in the long run.

Harvard languished for years and wallowed in DEI.

Their prior president had a laughably paltry 11 published works and all were DEI-related. Worse still, she plagiarized most of them.

Now we are witnessing the result.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm confused. Harvard has billions upon billions in its endowment, yet it can't pay for its PhD candidates? Why is it so reliant on the American taxpayer?

Seriously??? Is this a serious question??

This post shows an astounding lack of critical thinking, logical thinking, and creative thinking.

This mentality is apparently prevalent in our country and is causing the unfortunate downfall of the U.S.

Some of you are acting as if Harvard is a god to whom we should bow down and send federal dollars, regardless of what they do.. It's not, and its administrators and leaders need to change their attitude.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:$57 billion endowment, enough.

^^^ doesn't know how endowments work

LOL just sit on the endowment and get federal money.

I am so freaking tired of this. Let’s say you were a millionaire (like Sam Walton). And I wanted to get some groceries from you because I wanted to feed my family. Should you just give me my groceries because I am so wealthy? Or do you think it’s reasonable for me to say, come to my store and buy what you want. This is how research works too. We (American people) decide research is important and a public good. We look for the best places to get it. The answer is universities (Harvard and Georgia Tech). We pay for it. We don’t get to say “use your own money to pay for this thing that I want”.

Great. Send more money to Ga Tech.

[Anonymous]

Harvard has expensive fixed costs, bloated staffs etc. Pays much higher salaries for production. Perhaps they can tap into their grads for corporate support. They have $57 billion tax exempt status and pay very little if any property taxes. Move the research to Ames Iowa. Cleveland, East Lansing, West Lafayette for a fraction of the cost.

[Anonymous]

Agree a’ righting of the ship’ was needed in many universities. But we do need to be careful to cultivate our capabilities in research, etc.

Honestly, I am more worried about American students coming out of HS and if they can compete with our watered down math and science in education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe Harvard can come clean and self fund. Total disgrace. Ga Tech could do a better job and be more cost efective. Disperse the money to NC State, Purdue, Ohio State etc. Harvard margins and overhead way too high.

Trump is cutting funding for science research. Not redistributing it. Harvard’s webpage details the amazing science research they do and Trump is killing that. Shameful but just one of the many shameful things Trump does each day.

People also miss that Saudi Arabia, Dubai, China and other countries are giving large research grants to US labs to export the US scientific advantage to their country. My PhD science lab at a large state school got the majority of its funding from China and the Saudis. We also had a small amount of DARPA (US defense grants) but those came with tons of strings, paperwork and restrictions. NSF, NIH, and EPA funding was there, but also restricted. The foreign funding was far more useful and flexible for us to follow discoveries. For the foreign funds, our PI (a Nobel Prize recipient) had to spend a chunk of time every year teaching in their country and had to take students and post docs from their country to train them. But that was more manageable for him than writing a million grant request and reports for paltry amounts from US funding agencies.

The US needs to fund science or it will end up owned abroad with talented scientists working in antagonist countries. The middle eastern countries all know the oil is going to dry up someday and they are using that cash to buy themselves a spot as a scientific leader. And China plans to dominate the planet. It's huge a national security risk to kill US science and engineering funding in the way the Trump administration has done.

If the US has research funding, most of that foreign talent really does choose to stay in the US. We want those folks to stay. Many are brilliant. We literally won the atomic bomb race because of immigrants and many other discoveries come from foreign born, US-developed talent.

[Anonymous]

China must be really celebrating the decline of the science research institutions in the US. It kind of sounds like there are some Chinese government trolls here, cheering and egging it on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Agree a’ righting of the ship’ was needed in many universities. But we do need to be careful to cultivate our capabilities in research, etc.

Honestly, I am more worried about American students coming out of HS and if they can compete with our watered down math and science in education.

+1 Amen

[Anonymous]

So you want the American taxpayer to subsidize Harvard to import foreign talent and not educate/ train American Citizens for high paying jobs. Have more faith in your fellow citizens.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So you want the American taxpayer to subsidize Harvard to import foreign talent and not educate/ train American Citizens for high paying jobs. Have more faith in your fellow citizens.

That awful foreign talent. Like Einstein and the like.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm confused. Harvard has billions upon billions in its endowment, yet it can't pay for its PhD candidates? Why is it so reliant on the American taxpayer?

Seriously??? Is this a serious question??

This post shows an astounding lack of critical thinking, logical thinking, and creative thinking.

This mentality is apparently prevalent in our country and is causing the unfortunate downfall of the U.S.

Some of you are acting as if Harvard is a god to whom we should bow down and send federal dollars, regardless of what they do.. It's not, and its administrators and leaders need to change their attitude.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:China must be really celebrating the decline of the science research institutions in the US. It kind of sounds like there are some Chinese government trolls here, cheering and egging it on.

They’re poaching top scientists for sure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So you want the American taxpayer to subsidize Harvard to import foreign talent and not educate/ train American Citizens for high paying jobs. Have more faith in your fellow citizens.

That awful foreign talent. Like Einstein and the like.

Not at all, but why not put focus on brilliant Americans?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm confused. Harvard has billions upon billions in its endowment, yet it can't pay for its PhD candidates? Why is it so reliant on the American taxpayer?

Seriously??? Is this a serious question??

This post shows an astounding lack of critical thinking, logical thinking, and creative thinking.

This mentality is apparently prevalent in our country and is causing the unfortunate downfall of the U.S.

Some of you are acting as if Harvard is a god to whom we should bow down and send federal dollars, regardless of what they do.. It's not, and its administrators and leaders need to change their attitude.

This is crazy talk. The scientists want to do science, like treating cancer. The engineers want to be inventing new things. They have to justify every dollar they get in a grant through an extremely competitive proposal and review process, wherein they have to explain how the project would be a benefit. There is no "attitude" other than complete dismay at grant funding that had already been awarded being ripped away so they can't pay for supplies and equipment already ordered or pay their students and post docs.

The attitude you're hearing is all made up by the radical right who are doing their best to create a political foe out of science and engineering because they're too stupid to understand the research.