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0 pointsderbOac10mo ago0 comments

The current system is broken but nothing about this administration is aimed at helping fix its problems.

With most actions, there's nothing being remedied, just an assertion of control. The action isn't tied to an improvement goal or a remedy with rationale.

As Tao noted, in cases where a remedy for a wrong is mentioned, the remedies being proposed by the administration do far more harm to any ostensible victims than the original asserted wrongs.

Nothing about their actions is in good faith in terms of improving academics in the US, nor do they even try in most cases to pretend to be trying to improve academics at all.

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827a10mo ago

I agree that there is no reason to believe the current administration has any priority in fixing the situation, and its definitely reasonable to state that they're operating in bad faith, and that we have much bigger problems than this situation. However; continuing to pump taxpayer dollars and debt into an already enriched, broken system like this is on some level negligence.

UCLA paid their head football coach ~$6M/year. Will they ever decide to take any kind of money of that scale and fund Tao's research at IPAM? The reason you'll hear is "its ROI, a great football program generates revenue for the university" but the reality is: like 70% of University athletics programs are unprofitable, including UCLA's football program. Moreover: while I understand that universities have to operate like a business, their business goal must be "to make as much awesome education and research happen"; everything must serve that goal, and it doesn't today. I am extremely unconvinced that hyper-sized athletics programs and millionaire coaches further this goal, especially against the backdrop that they're tremendously and systemically unprofitable for everyone except the coaches, management, and the NCAA.

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