If the education bubble collapses, will it be the end of blue skies research ?

[diggy]

Mr. Resnick, I agree with and understand your points. What bothers me is that research professors (and graduate students) may be required to teach undergraduates. Perhaps it would more efficient if research professors and graduate students focused strictly on research while at the same time creating a new incentive structure for professors that focused strictly on teaching.

I do not know exactly how what I mentioned ties into the education "bubble" but I feel it is a waste of money having people, whose main focus is research, teaching undergrads, whose main focus is learning.

Typically research professors only teach 1 course per semester. Graduate students, post-docs, and researchers they employ teach ~0 (depending on students TA'ing or RA'ing). So although there are many professors who spend the bulk of their time with undergraduates, research groups tend to actually be much more researched based.

 

[Andy Resnick]

I do not know exactly how what I mentioned ties into the education "bubble" but I feel it is a waste of money having people, whose main focus is research, teaching undergrads, whose main focus is learning.

Research faculty (that is, non-tenure track faculty) have different job descriptions than tenure-track faculty. Research faculty generally don't teach.

 

[Andy Resnick]

This is where we differ in opinion: the master carpenter can have a growing business cranking out beds, without him having the necessity to have *apprentices*. He can have lots of people employed in his business and he doesn't need to bring them to master status in order for his business to run well, for him to be socially recognized as a good carpenter and for him to make a good living.

I'm not sure it's a material difference in opinion- in my experience, large lab operations treat the students/postdocs/junior faculty as little more than 'hired help'- there's no mentoring or training going on there, either. But the PI is considered to be running a successful business.

 

[vici10]

I'm not sure it's a material difference in opinion- in my experience, large lab operations treat the students/postdocs/junior faculty as little more than 'hired help'- there's no mentoring or training going on there, either. But the PI is considered to be running a successful business.

Universities need graduate students for the research and teaching. Instead of hiring people and paying them normal wages, Universities instead taking graduate students, pay them peanats and pretend that they are some type of apprentices that will become masters one day, but these "apprentices" are not considered workers, and do not have labour protection that workers enjoy. In most cases these "apprentices" do not become masters. And it is mostly depends on lack. Some become PIs other have to drive bus for 10$ a hour as for example, Dr. Prascher http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/science/16prasher.html?_r=1"

If the graduate students suddently will stop teach and do research in the labs whole system will collapse.

if labs instead will hire PH.Ds and teaching instead of graduate students and adjanct will be done by PH.D with normal wages and benefits then the influx of surplaced Ph.Ds will decrease significantly. So, it is not that there are no jobs in academia, there is plenty. Universities just do not want to pay for it, why would they, if there "students" who perform work are even not considered "working".

There is a good book about this system "How the university works" https://www.amazon.com/dp/0814799752/?tag=pfamazon01-20

 

[Andy Resnick]

UUniversities instead taking graduate students, pay them peanats and pretend that they are some type of apprentices that will become masters one day, but these "apprentices" are not considered workers, and do not have labour protection that workers enjoy.

There is some truth to this: graduate and post-doctoral positions barely pay a subsistence wage, and there are, at best, minimal benefits (i.e. health care coverage). Also AFAIK, the tuition, when covered by a grant, is considered taxable income. This inevitably creates an unstable power structure within academia, one that is subject to abuse.

That's why it has become so much more important for *you*, the student, to match your needs to that of the advisor/department/college/institution.

I don't *need* students in my lab- I can perform my research by myself. My students enter my lab only if we can generate a *mutually beneficial* relationship.

Honestly, if I could get away with it, I'd hire technicians to do as much of the lab work as possible.

 

[Animastryfe]

this is called knowledge century meaning that long term researches will end ...we will not see any 20 yr project from now on .

I don't see how 'no more long term research projects' naturally follows from 'this is a knowledge century'.

 

[twofish-quant]

Perhaps it would more efficient if research professors and graduate students focused strictly on research while at the same time creating a new incentive structure for professors that focused strictly on teaching.

That does tend to happen. The trouble is that what ends up happening if you separate the roles is that the money, power, status goes to the "pure researchers", the "pure teachers" get very little and everyone ends up wanting to do pure research than pure teaching.

Creating a new incentive structure is extremely difficult because there is a limit to which you can "engineering" social systems. In particular the people that have the power to change the system, tend to be the people that don't want it to change.

Also, personally, I don't think it's a good thing, since if you want to teach people to be physicists you want to get them involved in research as quickly as possible, and even for people that aren't professional scientists, you really want them to get exposed to hard core science research.

I do not know exactly how what I mentioned ties into the education "bubble" but I feel it is a waste of money having people, whose main focus is research, teaching undergrads, whose main focus is learning.

First of all, I get nervous when people talk about "efficiency" and "waste" because something that seems inefficient and wasteful may not be such. Lifeboats and seat belts are hugely inefficient and wasteful until you need them. Also research is inherently wasteful and inefficient. For every idea that changes the world, you have to deal with 100 that didn't.

Also, a lot depends on who you are trying to teach and how, but if you are in a situation where you are trying to teach the next generation of Nobel prize winners, the real education will happen in a research lab and not a lecture hall.

 

[twofish-quant]

if labs instead will hire PH.Ds and teaching instead of graduate students and adjanct will be done by PH.D with normal wages and benefits then the influx of surplaced Ph.Ds will decrease significantly.

The trouble with that is that then you end up with a situation similar to business, law, and medicine in which people have to have insane amounts of debt to go through graduate school. Either that or you will drastically reduce the number of incoming Ph.D.'s which I think is a bad thing.

Also there is no surplus of physics Ph.D.'s.

So, it is not that there are no jobs in academia, there is plenty. Universities just do not want to pay for it, why would they, if there "students" who perform work are even not considered "working".

It's not "won't" but "can't." If you doubled graduate student salaries, then you have to make a set of decisions, and at least for physics graduate education, most of the alternatives seem quite a bit worse than the current system once you work out the consequences.

Personally, I think the current system is quite *good* if you provide better career advice for physics/math Ph.D.'s. I have to jump up and down to say this but there is no glut of physics Ph.D.'s.

 

[vici10]

The trouble with that is that then you end up with a situation similar to business, law, and medicine in which people have to have insane amounts of debt to go through graduate school.

Personally, I think education must be free, like in Europe (although recently they also tend to go to an American model). I understand that it is hard for Americans to swallow (propoganda, upbringing etc.)

Also there is no surplus of physics Ph.D.'s.

By reading your other posts I understood (correct me if I am wrong) that you convinced yourself that working at Wall street and make rich people richer is socially productive. I personaly think differently. If Ph.Ds (mathematics or physics) are in demand mostly in financial sector something is wrong with the society.

 

[twofish-quant]

Personally, I think education must be free, like in Europe (although recently they also tend to go to an American model).

Education is never free. The big question is who pays. I'm curiously a fan of high tax rates.

I understand that it is hard for Americans to swallow (propoganda, upbringing etc.)

Not really. The problem is that if you don't charge tuition then what generally happens is that you end up very strongly restricting the number of people that can get higher education.

By reading your other posts I understood (correct me if I am wrong) that you convinced yourself that working at Wall street and make rich people richer is socially productive.

I also end up making poor people richer. If the economy falls apart, it's the poor that get hit first with job losses.

I personaly think differently. If Ph.Ds (mathematics or physics) are in demand mostly in financial sector something is wrong with the society.

That's nice. So do you have any ideas on how to change things?

Personally, one reason I ended up on Wall Street is because I'm a die-hard Marxist that spent much of my formative years reading and being influenced by leftist and socialist ideas. My political and economic philosophy is very strongly influenced by Noam Chomsky, C. Wright Mills, and Antonio Gramsci. Something that is very strong in Marxist philosophy is the way that the power elites maintain their power, and much if it happens through control of the economic system.

If I had been around in the 1920's or even the 1960's, I probably would have ended up a revolutionary intent on overthrowing the evil capitalist system. However, the defining event of my youth was the collapse of the Soviet Union, so that didn't work...

 

[Animastryfe]

If I had been around in the 1920's or even the 1960's, I probably would have ended up a revolutionary intent on overthrowing the evil capitalist system. However, the defining event of my youth was the collapse of the Soviet Union, so that didn't work...

Heh, amusing.

Would you say that there is enough demand from industry alone for hard science and math PhDs? By industry, I only mean sectors that are strongly related to the PhD's field, which I suppose would include the financial sector for some math PhDs.

 

[vanesch]

I have to jump up and down to say this but there is no glut of physics Ph.D.'s.

Yes and no. The problem is that the PhD. is mostly tuned to, and pictured to be, the first step towards professorship. Most people entering a PhD program are dreaming of, or are supposed to be dreaming of, becoming postdoc, junior faculty, and, tadaa, professor.

You are probably right that the need for people who have genuine research experience (that is to say, who did things that just weren't known, and of which you couldn't read in textbooks how to do it) are valuable in many places, and that there isn't too much of an over-production of them. The problem is that most of them were set out to go for the 100-to-1 struggle for that unique professorship somewhere, and who see it as the failure of their career to end up working for industry or anything else, not being what they were supposed to do.

It is entirely TRUE that there are many interesting careers out of academia, for people with a high-level academic training. But the training, and the trainee, set out in many cases to remain in academia, and from that pov, there is a huge overproduction.
I don't know if so many students would go for a PhD if they knew in advance that they would not end up in academia.

 

[Andy Resnick]

Also there is no surplus of physics Ph.D.'s.

But the training, and the trainee, set out in many cases to remain in academia, and from that pov, there is a huge overproduction.

I think you are both correct- twofish is most likely correct, because unemployment levels of PhDs (most likely *any* discipline) are very low (AFAIK).

But vanesch is also correct that there is an institutionalized bias towards pursuing an *academic* career, and not just a *successful* career.

 

[vici10]

Twofish-quant ,

I do not think we disagree much. I would like to add just several comments.

I also end up making poor people richer. If the economy falls apart, it's the poor that get hit first with job losses.

You support those in control. Most of us do, but just as one becomes closer to powerful, the more responsible he becomes for oppression by the elite of the rest of the population.

So do you have any ideas on how to change things?

My ideas would be probably too radical for this forum.
Capital is finance, and this is where power is concentrated. Power nowadays is measured in prices, through capitalization. Since power is being quantified, it is not surprising that mathematics and physics Ph.D's are in demand for those in control to increase their power and other areas are not considered that important. So to change things, one should abolish the rule of capital, I.e capitalism.
Personally, I am a fan of direct democracy, planning, workers control at workplace (in the sense of original soviets) and abolition of private property.

My political and economic philosophy is very strongly influenced by Noam Chomsky, C. Wright Mills, and Antonio Gramsci.

These are good writers, although the problem with them is that they stopped examining capital and moved into culture. Capitalism has changed from the days of Marx, but leftists abandoned empirical critical analysis of capital. This is partly a reason for a sorry state of modern left. If you are interested in subject I would recommend a book “Capital as Power” by Bichler and Nitzan. http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/259/"

If I had been around in the 1920's or even the 1960's, I probably would have ended up a revolutionary intent on overthrowing the evil capitalist system. However, the defining event of my youth was the collapse of the Soviet Union, so that didn't work...

It is easier to be a revolutionary in the time of revolutionary change and it is much more difficult in the times of reaction.
Regarding collapse of USSR, there are complex reasons.

In any way, I went quite far off-topic. If you are interested in a continuation of the discussion I suggest to open a thread in Politics section.

 

[twofish-quant]

Capitalism has changed from the days of Marx, but leftists abandoned empirical critical analysis of capital.

It's probably because they avoid professions where you learn about how money and power works. The reason I ended up working on Wall Street, is precisely because I am a Marxist. Once you figure out that money and power are the root of why things are why they are, then it's logical to go somewhere that you learn about money and power.

 

[FD3SA]

It's probably because they avoid professions where you learn about how money and power works. The reason I ended up working on Wall Street, is precisely because I am a Marxist. Once you figure out that money and power are the root of why things are why they are, then it's logical to go somewhere that you learn about money and power.

Twofish, I have recently been very concerned with exactly the question of wealth generation. I have spent a great deal of time looking at the history of the western civilization and analyzing which policies work and which don't. My conclusion is simply that all socialist forms of governance (including representative democracy) are unsustainable.

Interestingly, my sentiments are shared by some prominent people. The financial situation the majority of the western world (US & Europe) see themselves in is largely caused by the runaway process of increased government spending due to socialist voting patterns.

I refer you to an excellent article by the Global Custodian Editor in Chief.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/wi...pped-through-revolution-extinguishing-politic

 

[diggy]

My conclusion is simply that all socialist forms of governance (including representative democracy) are unsustainable.

Lets cross our fingers, I dream of living in a land where every road is a toll road and water fountains require the swipe of a credit card.

 

[vici10]

]The reason I ended up working on Wall Street, is precisely because I am a Marxist. Once you figure out that money and power are the root of why things are why they are, then it's logical to go somewhere that you learn about money and power.

As Marx has said:
”The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways—the point however is to change it.”

Learning of how present system works is of course necessary first step.

It's probably because they avoid professions where you learn about how money and power works.

There is probably some truth in what your are saying. I found the critical research of Bichler and Nitzan be refreshing and original, especially their empirical methods.
Interestingly enough, Nitzan before becoming a professor worked for five years as Senior Editor at the BCA Emerging Markets Strategist. And their books are mostly admired not by economists, but by mathematicians and physicists, although they do not use heavy math. Your opinion about their work, as someone who works at Wall Street in quantitative analysis, would be very interesting.

 

[twofish-quant]

My conclusion is simply that all socialist forms of governance (including representative democracy) are unsustainable.

Which is interesting since I happen to be a fan of socialism. The problem is that people use the term socialism to mean fifty different things, and it's often not clear what people are talking about.

The financial situation the majority of the western world (US & Europe) see themselves in is largely caused by the runaway process of increased government spending due to socialist voting patterns.

And I'm all for more government spending and higher taxes on the wealthy, and much of the problem in the financial system was because there wasn't enough government regulation. One reason I tend to be favorable toward socialism is because I work in a large financial corporation.

Big corporations tend to be mini-centrally planned economies, so I'm more comfortable with bureaucracy and central planning than other people. I should point out that this is not an unusual opinion among people in finance, which is why Wall Street gets along with Obama a lot better than it gets along with the Tea Party folks.

It's also the fact that I come out of academia which absolutely depends on high levels of government spending. Also I personally have massively benefited from government spending both directly (i.e. student loans) and indirectly (defense contracts to research universities), so I think that taxes in the US for the wealthy are too low.

 

[twofish-quant]

Learning of how present system works is of course necessary first step.

The trouble of course is that once you get inside the system, the powers-that-be give you enough money and prizes that you don't want to change the system, and you start thinking like the people within the system.

The google term for this is "social reproduction."

I found the critical research of Bichler and Nitzan be refreshing and original, especially their empirical methods.

I don't find their ideas to be either refreshing or original. On the other hand the ideas of neo-classical economists tend to be particularly *unoriginal*.

It's interesting, but I think it's quite crude. One problem is what does it mean to "own" something? Suppose I "own" 50 shares of Exxon. What exactly does that mean? Also, they also seem to make the general mistake of assuming corporations are individual humans when they aren't. When you say "private property". What is "private" and what is "property"?

I should point out that these sorts of questions are not "academic." It's the sort of thing that people think about at work.

 

[vanesch]

My conclusion is simply that all socialist forms of governance (including representative democracy) are unsustainable.

That's Margaret Thatcher's opinion, no ? Socialism is unsustainable because sooner or later you run out of other people's money

 

[eaglezfan187]

And I'm all for more government spending

Are you for or against the bailouts? Because although at first glance they seem socialist, in reality they are quite the opposite. They tax the ordinary citizens (through inflation) and give the money to banks like AIG, but banks like AIG still owe money to banks like Goldman Sachs thus making the rich even richer. Which is not socialism.

 

[vici10]

Regarding private ownership, I shall quote Bichler and Nitzan:

“Every social order is created through a certain mixture of cooperation and power. In Athenian democracy cooperation was paramount; in capitalism, power is the governing principle. The primacy of power in capitalism is rooted in the centrality of private ownership. ‘Private’ comes from the Latin privatus, meaning ‘restricted,’ and from privare, which means ‘to deprive.’ In the words of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: ‘The first man who, having enclosed off a piece of land, got the idea of saying “This is mine” and found people simple [minded] enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society’ (Rousseau 1754: Second Part). The most important feature of private ownership is not to enable those who own, but to disable those who do not. Technically, anyone can get into someone else’s car and drive away, or give an ‘order’ to sell all of Warren Buffet’s shares in Berkshire Hathaway. The sole purpose of private ownership is to prevent us from doing so. In this sense, private ownership is wholly and only an act of exclusion, and exclusion is a matter of power. Exclusion does not have to be exercised. What matters is the right to exclude and the ability to exact terms for not excluding. These ‘terms’ are the source of accumulation.
The actual process of exclusion is qualitative and potentially multifaceted; its ultimate evidence, quantitative and uniform. We can observe and describe the many individual facets of exclusion, but the only way to ‘aggregate’ these qualitatively different facets is by examining the distribution of income (earnings) and its temporal trajectory (risk). And since both earnings and risk are a matter of exclusion and therefore power,it follows that capital, being the present value of risk-adjusted earnings, represents the capitalisation of power. Ultimately, what gets capitalised is the power to ‘order’ society.

Furthermore, and crucially, since power and distribution are inherently differential, we cannot talk about ‘absolute’ accumulation. Accumulation is always and everywhere a differential process, a quantitative representation of the power of owners relative to others – others who can exclude plenty, others who can exclude little, and, finally, those who can exclude no one and therefore own nothing.

Bichler and Nitzan “New Imperialism or New Capitalism?
http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/124/01/041214NB_NewImperialismNewCapitalism(Ver2).pdf"



Regarding the question what is being owned:

“Every power society has its own hierarchical system of ranking, and capitalism’s is by far the most universal, flexible and encompassing. With capital viewed as a capitalisation of power, the logic of accumulation is inherently differential. A stock or a bond is a power claim over the social process. Its relative quantity, measured as a ratio of money values, represents the proportionate ability of the owners to control and shape this process for their own aims. And since this power, by definition, is exclusionary, it is only relevant relative to the power of other owners. Microsoft’s capitalisation being $300 billion is meaningless. But this capitalisation being 13 times larger than GM’s and a million times larger than a well-off software analyst gives us a clear reading of Microsoft’s relative power. For this reason, capitalists seek not absolute accumulation, but differential accumulation. They want not more purchasing power or more machines, but to see their assets grow faster than the average. They want to augment their ability to exclude and redistribute, and the evidence for this ability is differential asset growth.

Bichler and Nitzan “New Imperialism or New Capitalism?
http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/124/01/041214NB_NewImperialismNewCapitalism(Ver2).pdf"

Just a note about exclusion. This is borrowed from Veblen who saw “industry” and “business” being in constant conflict. For Veblen “industry” is human creativity, “instinct of workmanship”, human urge to shape nature, to produce. The main goal of “industry” is production of goods and services for betterment of human life.
Business aims are different. Its main goal is monetary wealth. Business is all about ownership and power.
Under capitalism industry is subjugated to business. If industry will stop, business will not be able to accumulate profit. But if industry will be allowed to produce in full capacity, business will become redundant and will lose ability to control and hence ability to profit. Therefore Veblen talks about “strategic sabotage” of business over industry (productive capacity of community).

It's interesting, but I think it's quite crude.

It is not their model that is crude, what is crude is what they are analyzing: the capitalists. These people account to no more than 1 to 5% of population, and yet they own the vast majority of world's resources. They are driven by the simple and crude dynamic of accumulation of capital. Sure we can hire physicists to make it look very complex. In final analysis it still comes down to bunch of wealthy families that essentially care for nothing but the accumulation of power that is invested and represented by wealth. The fact that majority of planet suffers from a lack of clean water, are food insecure and are deprived of energy resources does not matter as such to these people. These people, a small group of people, driven by motivations, pathetically crude motivations that perpetuate the capitalist system.