The research bust at US universities

Parents Forum
1

<p>Overbuilding leads to cash crunch-</p>

<p><a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/09/09/340716091/u-s-science-suffering-from-booms-and-busts-in-funding"&gt;http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/09/09/340716091/u-s-science-suffering-from-booms-and-busts-in-funding&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

2

<p>Even organized mendicity is finding that easy money does not flow forever. </p>

3

<p>How can this be when everyone knows that STEM is a guarantee of a high paying career with lifetime job security? And all those loser humanities majors never get to know the thrill of losing an important scientific research grant and having to let their team go… Pity.</p>

4

<p>My assumption is that it will be harder to get in a funded Phd program and to continue to get your funding. I am also guessing that this will impact the number of post doc positions.</p>

5

<p>This impacts the bottom line of research universities on the whole. Fewer research dollars means fewer jobs, fewer TAs, morale issues, other univ. employees stretched to the max, fewer sections of courses, students not getting into needed courses. This is real and trickles down. It’s not just scientists who feel the crunch. </p>

6

<p>It also means that salaries are getting slashed - even for tenured professors if they aren’t bringing in enough money. And it’s part of the reason why we don’t have the medication for ebola - the money just hasn’t been there to fund the research at the levels it should be.</p>

7

<p>Academic research is not the sole path to medical discovery. </p>

<p><a href=“Archive-It - News Releases”>http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2014pres/09/20140902b.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

8

<p>No of course it’s not, but I’d say curing highly contagious diseases ought to be in the public interest.</p>

9

<p>

</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2014pres/09/20140902b.html[/quote]”>http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2014pres/09/20140902b.html

[/quote]
</a></p>

<p>I wonder if anyone in history ever claimed that academic research is not the sole path to medical discovery.</p>

<p>In the linked article, it is still government funding, and the company has not yet come up with the results.</p>

10

<p>Read the entire story of the Ebola treatments on monkeys in Canada, as well as what helped the two Americans</p>

<p>As far as the government funding, someone might have decided to save years of wasteful academic welfare and hasten the development. Not much different than the stuff that happens at DARPA when a crisis arises. </p>

11

<p>Interesting article. I heard one University President also say that research universities are highly vulnerable to the percentage of overhead that the federal government allows for research grants. If that percentage would be reduced, many universities would be hurting.</p>

12

<p>Absolutely. That money pays for many of the important infrastructure items-libraries, computers, often with some left over for academics.</p>

13

<p>Well, the question might be … should government sponsored research pay for the infrastructure and administration of colleges? And if they should, would we differentiate between the uber rich HYPS and the schools at the brink of bankruptcy? Do we expect the government to support and fund all research without much concern for attainable results that happen to serve more than perennial insiders? </p>

14

<p>duplicate</p>

15

<p>Without addressing your editorial views the schools should be reimbursed for the research infrastructure just as utility companies charge for the power lines and substations. You don’t do research without access to that infrastructure and administration at your beck and call. If you think they are expensive just ask some of the major private research firms for a bid. They dont have grad students and post-docs to do the grunt work for cheap.</p>