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Intel Drops Support For Science Talent Search
An anonymous reader writes: Started by Westinghouse Electric, the Science Talent Search (STS) has for 73 years been the nation's oldest and most prestigious science competition for high school students. Intel has been sponsoring the competition since 1998 at an annual cost of approximately ~$6M, representing 0.01 of the company's $56B revenue last year. Intel's abrupt decision to cancel sponsorship of this beloved and venerable institution is baffling to students and educators the world over. Former STS finalists include inventor Ray Kurzweil and physicist Brian Greene.
$300 million? Oh, that's right, the executive who pushed Intel this direction is leaving now. Here's her announcement to leave: https://archive.is/egdkd Here's her announcement for the Diversity Program. https://archive.is/YYbrY Here's where that $300 million came from: https://archive.is/EIqxl
is it that bad seein a hot chick again? if i see a hot chick walkin down the hall i dont say "repost"
Intel has been sponsoring the competition since 1998 at an annual cost of approximately ~$6M, representing 0.01 of the company's $56B revenue last year
If we're going to be on a website where people presumably understand basic math, can we at least use the relevant number? Revenue is not money that a company can use freely......most of it goes to paying for supplies, paying employees, etc.
A more relevant number is profit, that tells you how much money a company has after paying the bills. Another interesting number might be the advertising budget, since that's kind of what Intel is doing there.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The gender distribution was getting more and more female, so that's probably not why. One year, Natalie Portman was a winner.
Hot grits!!
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I would love to see some Chinese company take over the sponsorship from Intel.
“It’s such a premier event in terms of young people and technology,” Mr. Barrett said. “But they appear to be more interested in applied things, like” Maker Faire, an all-ages event that showcases homemade engineering projects.
I see everyone jumping on the diversity bandwagon as an explanation, but I'm guessing one of the reasons they're not supporting this anymore is that it doesn't fit with their business model anymore. To a layman, technology is more about apps and social media now than the solid state electronics, physics and chemistry needed to power it. Of course, no one thinks about the fact that these fundamentals will have to keep advancing if we want cheaper, faster, smaller computers and phones to run those apps on. This is a pretty clear signal that Intel is an engineering company, not a science company.
Corporate basic research is pretty much dead now unfortunately -- Bell Labs is a tiny sliver of what it was, HP is almost entirely product-focused now, and who knows what's going on with IBM. Things like this, plus the fact that scientists are entering a shrinking market and treated badly, are only going to serve to reduce the number of students interested in science. US science students are seeing a lot of the same things IT workers are seeing now -- foreign students willing to work for any wage just to get the opportunity to study here, the slow demise of permanent solid employment, and a general lack of interest by the public.
It's going to take something like the Chinese colonizing Mars and extracting all its natural resources before a Soviet-style space race shocks the US out of its disinterest in science. This was one of the only good things to come out of the Cold War -- look how many state university systems were built up in the 60s and 70s and how much research got funded without griping about the cost.
After the Gnome Foundation said they were out of money, it was revealed that they had blown a huge chunk of the budget on "women's outreach" instead of developing software. The top dog (Karen Sandler) departed soon after.
Will companies ever get savvy enough to detect these ideologues before it's too late, or will they do a lot more damage in the future? We've all seen what's happened at Reddit . . .
SJW's don't count jews and asians as minorities, only blacks and some hispanics (not the rich or successful ones). The second your race or religion begins to succeed, then SJW's can't use you as an example of evil white male oppression, and so you're not a minority anymore.
Your parents emphasize education, as do East Asian parents. Studies show family emphasis on education outweighs any other factor.
The Left and Right argue about funding levels, and what goes where, but both ignore this elephant in the room.
You would have done well going to a terrible school, as would East Asian kids. Kids from families that don't care won't do very much better in an awesome school. The link with money per pupil, class size, and so on is gossamer compared to family emphasis on scholastics. These are red herring talking points.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Jews are the only minority that can occupy two spots on the organizational ladder of "oppression", bot the bottom rung as "most oppressed" as well as the top rung "publicly make jokes and articles about running the media and influencing politics." As various SJWs argue over which of them is more oppressed than the next, Jews take an entirely different stance, proving that the ladder is in fact a wheel that we are simply viewing in 2D.
http://i.cubeupload.com/T6cyLu.png
Intel just spent $300 million on a "diversity drive". But $6m for a race-and-gender-neutral science talent search was too much for them.
Of course, there's a radical subset of the population who hates that I point this out.