Let's show appreciation and gratitude towards each other's contributions on the board.
- Manlobbi
Stocks A to Z / Stocks B / Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A)
No. of Recommendations: 11
The US has, for decades, attracted the best and brightest from around the world. Many of these have worked in research labs at our largest universities (largely because of a lack of a equivalently trained Americans willing to do so) and our standard of living reflects their contributions.
We are close friends of a family in Singapore (ethnic Indian) whose daughter has been studying in the US. She got her undergraduate degree at Brown University and then moved to Cambridge and worked at MIT. She has recently moved on to Harvard. I wrote to her father to inquire how she was doing and received the following:
So far, (my daughter) is fine, and no one she knows personally has been impacted. Definitely the tension is cranked up for her and us. Adding to the tension are some old hazards: yesterday (Sunday) afternoon there was an active shooter situation in Harvard Square. I learned about it at 4.30am my time and it was a difficult period until I could speak with her to ascertain her well being. Thankfully no one was hurt.
Research programs are getting defunded at scale impacting research and impacting plans. One of the projects she was looking forward to join does not have funding now. This situation is probably happening to tens of thousands of projects in campuses all over the US.
On top of everything, learning that the demand letter sent to Harvard by the administration was “unauthorised" but acknowledging the mistake not changing anything makes it all so Kafkaesque. Though Harvard is trying to take a stand, it will be difficult to sustain and there will be consequences & collateral damage.
Education is just one facet of changes being unleashed. The world as we know it is rapidly being reconfigured. It is all a bit surreal and difficult to process.
I get that a lot of systems and institutions have gotten stale and need a serious update—but what took decades to build can't be changed overnight without risking severe long-term damage.
Back to Jeff again:
As someone who is a product of an essentially free municipal education, I fully appreciate the financial implications of her education. As someone who earned an electrical engineering degree and an MBA in night school (while working full-time an entrepreneur during the day), I fully understand the difficulties involved and why so many American kids choose less challenging routes (I was going to sign up for a law degree afterwards, but my wife said my first case would be our divorce if I did another stint at night school :-). While this young lady is obviously very gifted, she is representative of the quality of foreign students who we seem determined to force to do their work elsewhere.
Jeff
No. of Recommendations: 6
The White House's attack of major universities not only impacts foreign students, but the ability of universites to function for all their stakeholders - students as well as academians.
The White House crackdown on higher education could cause financial trouble at colleges and universities that rely on federally funded research, S&P Global Ratings warned on Monday.
“Material cuts to federal research funds could create operating pressures,” S&P said in a report.
The warning comes after the Trump administration froze about $2.2 billion of federal grants and contracts at Harvard University last week and canceled $400 million in grants and contracts for Columbia University earlier this month.
“S&P Global Ratings believes heightened credit risks for US colleges and universities with significant federally funded research are growing, given evolving policies that might reduce or delay the funding,” the credit ratings firm said.
S&P said institutions with very high research spending and doctoral production are “disproportionately affected” by the funding changes and could “experience financial pressure.”
To offset federal funding cuts, S&P said university management will need to consider budget options, including layoffs, spending cuts and reduced research programs.
To be honest, none of this makes the slightest sense to me. I understand that the current administration is "burning the furniture" in an effort to collect enough savings to extend the tax cuts, and the uneducated portions of their base are encouraged to be cheerleaders, but they are (what else is new) trashing yet another of the long-term advantages that the US has compared to its competritors. Just remember - there are as many engineering students in China as there are students in the US. If inovation is a function of the number of engineers working in the field, it explains how China could develop a compitant AI for $6 million and run it on second-class chips.
Jeff
No. of Recommendations: 2
(I was going to sign up for a law degree afterwards, but my wife said my first case would be our divorce if I did another stint at night school :-)
My Mom once told me that when she got married to my Dad shortly after WW II, he decided he wanted to stay in the Air Force as a career because it would be a stable way to provide for the family. She said that was as close as they ever came to a divorce, and when he finally put his 30 years in and retired, she decided where they would be living thereafter.
