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Can High-Tech Academia Survive Silicon Valley's Talent Binge?
An anonymous reader writes: Earlier this year, Carnegie Mellon had one of the most capable robotics research centers in the world. Then, Uber hired away dozens of workers in a frantic push to jump start development of autonomous driving technology, which left CMU reeling. Now the NY Times asks whether such high-tech labs can continue to exist; Silicon Valley seems ready to flood such organizations with money whenever a vital new technology is almost ripe. "Carnegie Mellon's experience is a familiar one in the world of high-tech research. As a field matures, universities can wake up one day to find money flooding the premises; suddenly they're in a talent war with deep-pocketed firms from Silicon Valley. The impacts are also intellectual. When researchers leave for industry, their expertise winks off the map; they usually can't publish what they discover — or even talk about it over drinks with former colleagues. ... [Also], the intellectual register of their work changes. No more exploring hard, ''basic'' problems out of deep curiosity; they need to solve problems that will make their employers money."
If the professors want to make money, let them. It's not a requirement to sell your soul to the university, or to devote yourself to poverty in the name of higher-learning.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
This 'story' is just an attempt to create the illusion of a shortage of AI researchers. I think it's pretty clear that a) there is no such shortage, and b) if there were, then colleges, as teaching institutions, would be uniquely able to deal with it themselves.
All of this talent was started and cultivated out of the 2004 DARPA project. That was a decade ago. The technology is finally ready for prime time. It's no longer "10 years in the future".
What academia needs to do is figure out what needs to be done in 2025, not 2015.
A lot of R&D follows a pretty repeatable pattern.
Self driving cars are now in phase 2. Google, Uber, and Apple are going to push hard to get the first cars out the door ASAP. In 2 decades what was once PhD level math and controls classes will be an introductory class for freshmen.
A university probably is involved in literally everything you mentioned. Especially curing your disease.
Ultimately, part of me is screaming "Good! Who cares?!" inside.
That's because educational institutions should be staffed with people who have the burning desire to teach other people. It's not for everyone, but there's a big difference between the person who is really interested in a subject, and the person who is really interested in sharing knowledge about the subject with as many others as possible.
If an entire lab full of faculty was poached by corporations, that tells me those people were more interested in big paychecks and/or being a part of a commercial project than in teaching.
It's a big mistake for a college or university to go down the road of trying to pay more and more, to "compete" with businesses for staff. That just raises the price of tuition and puts the education out of reach of more people. Precisely what the schools should NOT be about. Maybe they need to consider more flexible options to let experts in these industries come in and teach 1 or 2 classes, part-time? Otherwise, maybe they're getting too specific with what they're teaching, if their workers keep getting pulled right out for very specific corporate projects. Seems to me you can run a technology or science lab that teaches all sorts of concepts useful to a person interested in building an autonomous vehicle, without running autonomous vehicle research labs themselves.
Usually private industry can outbid universities in terms of salary but lags behind in terms of academic freedom, access to talented colleagues.
However, usually there are sufficient (good) academics who opt for a poor (typically for post-docs and junior assistant professors), modest (assistant to associate professors) to adequate (associate and full professors) salary (depending on whether or where you can get tenure) in an academic atmosphere over a more highly paid job where you're just another employee.
It mostly works out in the long run. Of course there are blips when you get patented ideological nutcases like gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and even core staff are pushed out. But mostly it evens out. Even for valuable tech subjects.
Very good professors (full, associate, and assistant) often manage to combine academic work and consultancy (especially at technological institutes). Especially when they aren't bogged down by their teaching workload.
It is completely logical what is happening here. What is valued most by many people in our society? Yes, it's money. So what these people do is simply apply what our culture teaches: go and earn lots of money. In other societies (in the past , now , or in the future , or elsewhere on earth) other values were or could become the most principal ones : knowledge , education , honesty, ... . Apparently we value knowledge , but maybe not enough. If knowledge gathering would be considered as the highest good then our society would have taken measures to associate a very high value with it , easily attracting the best of our minds.
less is more
in my life. The threat to Academia is our non-stop budget cuts driven by right wing politics and an overall anti elitist attitude (even against people who are legitimately elite and contribute their talents to society). For what I wish was the last God Damned Time people who are that fucking smart are _not_ in it for the money. They're not in it for those fat fat gov't grants. These people are so much more intelligent than you and me that money is just a means to their intellectual ends. Einstein was a patent clerk for fucks sake.
Yes, Academia is severely threatened right now; but not by better job offers...
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...is just the state subsidising high-risk / long-term ventures so that private enterprise can reap more easy profit.
I'm not sure what the solution is. We could give contracts to researchers preventing a move into private industry, or require businesses to somehow pay for use of research, but that's just acting as Preventer of People or Preventer of Information. We could identify at an earlier stage in the university employment process which researchers are likely to jump ship, and never employ them (there is a glut of sufficiently talented people that this can easily be done - and the best researchers are NOT by any stretch of the imagination those who are most interested in following the money). We could demand more money from private industry for universities, but that'll encourage them to act even more short-sightedly. We could move to the left a bit and stop fussing over the existence of cooperatively-owned high-tech industry - how about universities form companies belonging both to the university and the research team but do NOT float/sell them? - but that's hardly likely to happen in the USofA.
The summary glosses over the character of CMU itself. CMU is a research focused, selective private university that operates in large part from public and private grants and research contracts. It is not a public land-grant university set up to provide education opportunity to the general population. Teaching is a responsibility, but obtaining grant funding, then producing marketable research to obtain more grant funding, is a much bigger priority.
In addition, CMU benefits from patents. Just because there is public funding for the research, does not prevent the faculty and university from patenting the technology developed on the research projects. So the "raid" of CMU by Uber will likely result in another windfall later to CMU from patent licenses.
Taking all the good out of creativity and innovation... These people are real blood suckers
Really? The 1960s had talent when you had to work from basic physics to make one transistor computers.... Nowadays, you just copy and paste and you're a programmer.
Come on.
Yes, once. So why is a degree required for every job now? Does what you mention prevent universities from being cult-like businesslike recruiting centers for employers these days?
As Slashdot knows, the STEM shortage isn't a shortage of talented people, it is a shortage of jobs, so less people do it. In the 90s, my physics professors lamented less people coming in to physics. This is because there isn't a lot of jobs in physics like there is with computers.
If big business starts poaching smart people, more people will have incentive to get an education. It's not like university research is going away, but there will just be different faces as always. The net gain for society is more R&D and more educated folk.
I probably worked with some of those guys who got in with Uber when I also worked with the self driving car down Carnegie Mellon. Good for them.
God spoke to me
Part of the problem is that it takes experience to get experience. There are only a few top positions that have access to plenty of resources. Thus, only a few get a chance to learn how to work in such conditions where they have a lot of leverage, meaning those with the talent AND experience leveraging a lot of resources are very limited in number and thus highly sought after. You can't find that combo with a written test.
Warren Buffett can take bigger risks than medium-sized investors, and uses that capability to "gamble smartly" in a way the rest cannot (unless they risk crashing their company). He has the necessary skill, experience, and leverage, putting him at a big advantage over those with just 2 of those traits.
It's a kind of bottleneck at the intersection of skill and experience.
Table-ized A.I.
People still get sick. Some job of curing diseases that your precious universities are doing.
Checkmate. Touchdown. Tsumo. Chinitsu, toitoi, sanankou, sankantsu, red dora, rinshan kaihou.
Except for the business schools, you are basically full of shit. Universities (as opposed to teaching colleges) are mainly interested in research and rather esoteric knowledge. The fact that business decided to use them as gatekeepers is the fault of business. In that, they aren't using the knowledge kids get by going to uni but rather they are using unis as weed out programs because they got tired of hiring people who will say anything to get a job. Yes, the sainted proles also bear some responsibility for the effect you see.
What a terrible problem: your organization dedicated to furthering human knowledge was too successful and now has to train a new crop of employees.
Just to be really clear, places like Carnegie Mellon are not education focused institutions, they're research focused. We are absolutely not talking about people with a passion for classroom work. In the early 1990s, the federal government removed the requirements and incentives for contractors to dedicate significant budget to basic research. In many cases, new funding for research would only be available to universities. The idea was to shift all basic research to the univerisities. The people we're talking about are the folks who would have been employed at a large company doing government funded R&D in the 1980s. Now, they're doing government funded R&D at universities. For about 5-6 years in the late 90s, that worked well. Since the dot com bust, it has not...
The amount of spending on academic basic research in the US exceeded the total amount spent on startup companies in the US every year from 2000 to 2013. That's a horrible inversion of capital that implied the university-first research system was failing. It's about time we saw some of this work turn the corner into commercialization, along with a restoration of economic sanity to R&D.
Examples like this show that our new system may be viable long term.
Kids, please hold this up as an example as some dumb shit that sucked the corporate cock a little too often and contracted Stockholm syndrome as a result.
Never listen to retards like this. Unchecked corporations will ruin your freedom as surely as any government.
Ignore this advice at your own peril.
From time to time, a group of researchers split off and make products that are useful right away (as opposed to research focused maybe 5 years or further out), and I think that's AWESOME. Why wouldn't it be great?
Look at some examples from Stanford University: SUN Microsystems was founded in 1982 as "Stanford University Network" created by Andy Bechtolsheim as a graduate student at Stanford. SUN productized RISC systems, NFS, Unix, etc. Really great stuff. This didn't bother or hurt Stanford one bit, just made it a more attractive place for future entrepreneurs to attend/work for a while.
In the same 1982, Jim Clark was an (associate?) professor at Stanford doing research in 3D graphics, and he split off Stanford and formed Silicon Graphics with his graduate student team (Tom Davis, Rocky Rhodes, Kurt Akeley, etc) that they basically had created without taking any personal risk while working at Stanford. Nothing but great news for Stanford, people FLOCKED to join the university that produced that talented team.
A couple years later in 1984, Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerner were running the Stanford University computer systems and they split off forming Cisco.
A few years later in 1998 Stanford professor Mendel Rosenblum, with his Stanford grad student Ed Bugnion, and some others spun up VMware.
The list goes on and on for Stanford alone.
All these really awesome people came up with solid ideas in academia that were applicable in the next few years as viable products, then these people stepped up to form companies and make products I buy and use every day (or I use their descendant products) and these people formed companies that employed a lot of good people (I worked at Silicon Graphics for four really fun years), putting out solid products and making enough money to let some of us save up and do our own startups in time.
Seriously, this is really positive stuff. Why is anybody afraid of a team stepping up and out of academia? Usually it just means the possibility of a product that will make my life better. Heck, succeed or fail, I've seen some of those early guys back in the University system helping out again and finishing their PhDs they started years earlier when they got distracted (Rocky Rhodes, Ed Bugnion, etc). And there always seems to be a flood of new blood feeding up into the University, earlier successes CONTRIBUTE to recruitment to these Universities, it is a selling point that Stanford has produced some great companies.
If Uber grabs up a lot of great people from Carnegie Mellon, a flood of 18 and 22 year olds will flow in to replace them and get trained up. And I say good for EVERYBODY.
I don't know how such obvious irony got modded -1, while all the others who thought he was serious got modded insightful... Really...
I find this a nonsensical question. Aren't most people basically at the end of their Academic career once they get their PhD? That means grant money ran out, so they need to look for a post-doc or a teaching position. Since there is only one professor or a few per research group, that just leaves no options for the others, even very bright ones once they reach 30-35 years of age.
If a deep pockets company buys out the whole research group, that's something else. But even University research teams are smart enough to patent their own technology. And that's how Academia works, you build your research on top of that of others.
OMG someone got hired from Uni! Is there some petition I can sign to prevent people in Uni getting hired?
True. And that's why this is not poaching, they just simply exit education and start their lives.
Talented and educated people have jobs available, and we're trying to figure out why that's bad?
Well, except that if you are half-way through graduate school, you might have just been torpedoed and suffer a multi-year setback. If I recall correctly, CMU had something on the order of US$19M in robotics research grants from various organizations. (19M might not be the right number, but it was around that, or somewhere in the 20's, my memory is fuzzy.) That's funding for a lot of graduate students. Uber hired away PI's representing something like 40% of that. So, you lose your principal investigator, your thesis advisor, your RA stipend, probably most of your committee, and oh by the way: you need to start over at ground zero on a new topic, too, once you find another advisor. Good luck with that, since everybody you know is going to be scrambling for what ever scraps are left.
But, hey, you still get to live in Pittsburgh.
So, you lose your principal investigator, your thesis advisor, your RA stipend, probably most of your committee, and oh by the way: you need to start over at ground zero on a new topic, too, once you find another advisor. Good luck with that, since everybody you know is going to be scrambling for what ever scraps are left.
That exact situation happened to me. Thrice I finally said, "To heck with it!" and got a real job. Now I finally know what a healthy sleep schedule, home ownership, and having plenty of money in the bank (and other investments) feels like.
I find this a nonsensical question. Aren't most people basically at the end of their Academic career once they get their PhD? That means grant money ran out, so they need to look for a post-doc or a teaching position. Since there is only one professor or a few per research group, that just leaves no options for the others, even very bright ones once they reach 30-35 years of age.
Grad school dropout here. Every 30-something Ph.D. I know is either underemployed in a minimum wage job, on food stamps, living with their parents, or some combination thereof. That's why I dropped out. Funny how those Ph.D.s close so many doors for them come interview time.
Actually, it's no "fault" at all. A four year college education may only be the equivalent of a few weeks of on-the-job training, but it's a few weeks that the employer doesn't have to pay for, given all the public subsidies of college educations.
Great example of technology funded by Public Money ending up in corporate hands for Private Profit.
Ask anyone trying to get any academic position at a top tier university, the competition is fierce. At best, the universities are losing established talent only temporarily. The people who left will return, and with their newly acquired industry experience and networks, they will make academic positions even harder to get.
tl;dr - the universities aren't the victims here, new grads and prospective academics are.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Yes, once. So why is a degree required for every job now? Does what you mention prevent universities from being cult-like businesslike recruiting centers for employers these days?
That is how state socialism works. The state trains everyone. If you "play the game" (grades, degrees) you get a guaranteed "job" that is "in demand." This is how a "planned economy" works.
The "capitalists" all found it was more profitable this way, it is compatible with their monopolism and anti-competitive wet dreams.
The "state socialists" and "state communists" never wanted to abolish "the state" in the first place, so they too, found this was a great idea.
It depends on where you live, of course. At the higher education level, there are more actual "universities" but they too, need money, and "business people" tend to donate and fund projects that help them.
At the lower education level, yes, they are all "business schools" unless you attended a "private" school. Many "private" schools are not even "private" of course, that can have to do with standards and/or funding, so that is no certainty either.
Yes, it is all a clusterfuck. Yes, the more "degrees" they push out the more meaningless they become, just like inflation and "money."
I wish you luck finding a "university" that is still committed to research or even a traditional "liberal education" because they have pretty much all intentionally been destroyed.
It is basically what happens when you merge the public and private sectors together.
Business starts taking over universities. Business buys the government. They "partner" and spin it like it is a wonderful thing!
Business-wise, anything the taxpayer pays for is a bonus for them. If they can bribe the schools to teach things that normally they would have to train workers to learn on their own dime, it is a win.
School-wise...such shitty schools are just a way to make money, really.
Where do you live? Politicians promise to "create jobs" and even if you stopped all them, the finances are designed for "zero unemployment" ... state socialism, essentially, but with many "monopolistic capitalism" elements still in tact.
Throwing more taxpayer money at "education" and "degrees" is how they push "zero unemployment"
Not quite socialism, not quite capitalism, this hideous, ugly beast that just likes money.
I imagine they are some more research-oriented and "liberal education" universities around...they are basically doomed, like everyone else who is not well-connected.
They don't run the world financial system or governments. However "private" and "independent" they may be, their days are numbered. On purpose. They will eventually be forced to be "productive" like everyone else.
"Productive" of course means "take the government bribes" and "government bribes" of course means "taxpayer money" and "money" of course means "useless inflated piece of paper that is worthless"
You think too hard. Money. That's why. MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY. Not even real money. Fake money makes more money. That is all it is about. Same as anything else.
Yes, once. So why is a degree required for every job now? Does what you mention prevent universities from being cult-like businesslike recruiting centers for employers these days?
The "capitalists" all died centuries ago, committed suicide before Marx came along.
The "socialists" who weren't "state socialists" all died.
The "state socialists" and "state communists" and "monopoly capitalists" won. They are all bestest friends, forever and ever.
This is all you need to understand, really. The "business people" all sold out. The genuine ones hate this just as much as you do. They are just practically extinct, just like the non-state "socialists" are.
Satan won, centuries ago, before we were all born. Does that answer your question?
MONEY. That is all that matters to those people. The rest, are but means to an end.
Yes, once. So why is a degree required for every job now? Does what you mention prevent universities from being cult-like businesslike recruiting centers for employers these days?
"Universities" who teach "in demand job skills" get taxpayer money. So, they take the bribes, or go out of business.
What is "in demand" is not determined by the market, it is an intentional "feedback loop"
where "private" companies tell the government what their demands are.
"Private" companies and "cpaitalists" found if you purchase governments and install central banks, you get:
-- unlimited "capital" to bribe everyone with
-- you never run out of other people's money like the loser "socialists"
Pretend it is 1984, and realize it is all doublespeak, and it will make sense.
Not just a "socialist nightmare" -- they redefined "socialism" as well to mean "the state" nowadays.
Just go with "everyone is lying their ass off 24/7" and it will all make sense.
Because of money (that isn't money) and "in demand job skills" (that aren't really in demand) and private companies (that aren't really private) because of socialism (that is state socialism, and not really socialism) and because of banks (that don't really loan out their own money) and capitalists (who found that if you spend other people's "capital" you make more money quicker with less risk).
Because it is 1984, that's why.
At the tippy top of this system of fraud, they bribe the politicians with taxpayer money.
MONEY, that's why. What else? Fake, counterfeit, fictional "credit" and "checkbook" "money" that really isn't money, but people are required to accept it as legal tender.
Once these people seize control of the world finance system, they can just sanction everyone else into oblivion.
The universities, naturally, either take the bribes of taxpayer money and teach "job skills" and start shoving "degrees" out the door, or they too, will go out of business, the same as students who don't get a degree.
Because the world economy is not real, it is all deliberately and meticulously planned. Because "capitalists" decided that destroying capitalism was more profitable for them, CENTURIES ago.
Purchasing the government and purchasing politicians and purchasing universities was simply the more profitable route, everyone else be damned.
Because Satan.
State socialists == won
Crony capitalists == won
Zombie government owned by central banks == "winning"
Actual capitalists == all died centuries ago
Actual socialists == all died centuries ago
Actual universities == all went out of business
Everyone else who is not Satan == lost, big time.
Does that answer your question?
Because once you allow central bank usury to takeover the world (CENTURIES ago) then "state socialism" and "crony capitalism" are inevitable.
That is all it is. Because "God" lost and "Satan" rewrote the Bibles and said "usury is cool now" and the rest just followed.
Once you seize control of every nation's finances, you can "plan" the market however you want.
"Politics" and "education" are irrelevant here, that all came later. Results of this arrangement, not the primary causes.
It is only with such an arrangement of literally purchasing governments and taking over their powers of issuing currency, they can force their "business plans" on everyone else and bribe politicians and bribe universities.
If they had to actually put up actual "capital" and not get bailed out by governments when the inevitable bank run or currency drain occurs, you would quickly find, rich people don't give a damn if everyone gets a "degree" or not.
The "capitalists" found if they spend other people's money, if they loan other people's money, if they push everything onto the taxpayer, this is a great "competitive" move.
Purchasing universities is just the natural extension of such designs, already in motion centuries before.
After you purchase all the governments of the world and link all your "banks" together, the "universities" are just along for the ride, really.
Because "governments" that aren't really "governments"
1984.
Yes, once. So why is a degree required for every job now? Does what you mention prevent universities from being cult-like businesslike recruiting centers for employers these days?
"dude, I already got your money" -- central banks of the world
"dude, I already got your money" -- Charlie Sheen
"dude, I already own all your governments, the universities are just along for the ride" --
Satan, crony "capitalists", state "socialists" and state "communists"
"KILL ME KILL ME KILL ME...wait, we already completely died and are extinct" -- everyone honest, everyone who is not Satan, actual "capitalists", actual "universities", actual "governments", actual "socialists", actual "banks"
"MY university has their own bank and they are their own government entity unto themself and they are not acceptable to the whims of the international banking system" --
slashdork without a clue how things actually work in reality, thinks they are the center of the universe
Its not uncommon for over a hundred qualified PhDs to apply for a tenure track professorship at even mid level state universities, much less the Stanfords and CMUs. By staying on for PhD the person has already expressed a commitment to the academic side, forgoing up to a million dollars in salary during a 5-8 year PHD period.
For supporting first class industrial research. Older scientists remember when Bell Labs, IBM, Xerox, Exxon etc did world class R&D. They still do, but on a much reduced scale after the financial restructurings of the 1990s. The new guys with huge piles of cash have stepped in to do some of this.
The universities are pretty big on pushing the idea that a university degree is part of the path of landing a good paying job. This resulted in lots of people going to university, flooding the market with people holding degrees. The end result being that businesses started requiring degrees for positions that didn't really need one, pretty much because they could. Even with this, there's still lots of people with degrees who couldn't land a job with it.
This is actually coming back to bit the universities in the ass a bit, because now the expectation is that the university's purpose is to provide job training, a 4 year vocational school instead of university. A lot of the more traditional studies are starting to suffer like pure science, research, arts, philosophy, literature, history, etc. because these degrees don't typically translate directly into a job nowadays so people consider them worthless. Of course, as long as the money keeps pouring in most universities don't care though.
This is definitely wrong. A four-year degree involves teaching a little about many aspects of the field while a few weeks of job training would teach a lot about a narrow area.
I am enrolling for a scholarship at RMIT for a PhD in artificial intelligence. The key to my survival is the research which is already completed is for a seed artificial intelligence. Once the research is put on paper it will be available to all and tech companies would then only fight fight over nothing because the AI models the seed AI generates could do almost everything. And I will be in a penthouse drinking fine scotch. Cheers! Oh and free AI for everybody in 2016!
And generating the law students to craft laws and policies to help both corporation, investor/VC, and university (alma mater).
And generating side deals and licensing agreements with VCs/Corps even though they are stealing people away.
Currently, universities would rather have sweet licensing deals than more students.