<story><title>University of Leicester firing all pure math faculty</title><url>https://twitter.com/wtgowers/status/1355184163020804099</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kleiba</author><text>I recently read Dijkstra&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;On the fact that the Atlantic Ocean has two sides&amp;quot;. [1] In vast parts, it&amp;#x27;s not much more than mildly disguised US-bashing (Dijkstra was always a grumpy old man) but that&amp;#x27;s not what caught my eye. What did was the fact that he describes the US research landscape as a system that orients itself around short-term projects and industry desires. Dijkstra clearly expresses his contempt for this approach over what he claims to be the European way: long-term thinking and research done for research&amp;#x27;s sake.&lt;p&gt;That paper was written in 1982&lt;p&gt;Fast forward ~40 years, and the presumed US model &lt;i&gt;is exactly&lt;/i&gt; the way research funding works all across Europe today. Jumping from one project to the next, always hoping that one of your next proposals will receive funding, or you&amp;#x27;re out of a job. Your project proposal has a weak &amp;quot;exploitation&amp;quot; section? Well, goodbye proposal then! Universities are thought of as nothing more than R&amp;amp;D departments and providers of new young hires for the economic sector.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s only consequential then to axe such &amp;quot;useless&amp;quot; disciplines as pure mathematics.&lt;p&gt;This is a scandal.&lt;p&gt;--&lt;p&gt;Edit: these news from last September fit perfectly into the picture [2]:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;The European Union’s next research programme is likely to have a greater emphasis on funding for applied research, experts have warned, as universities were told to put pressure on politicians to increase the budget. [...]&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;In July, EU leaders agreed to spend €80.9 billion (£72.9 billion) on Horizon Europe, €13.5 billion less than was hoped for in May.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;However, regarding the budget cut, keep in mind the costs incurred by the COVID19 pandemic.&lt;p&gt;--&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cs.utexas.edu&amp;#x2F;users&amp;#x2F;EWD&amp;#x2F;transcriptions&amp;#x2F;EWD06xx&amp;#x2F;EWD611.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cs.utexas.edu&amp;#x2F;users&amp;#x2F;EWD&amp;#x2F;transcriptions&amp;#x2F;EWD06xx&amp;#x2F;E...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.timeshighereducation.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;horizon-europe-will-further-weaken-basic-research-funding&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.timeshighereducation.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;horizon-europe-wil...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>anticristi</author><text>I agree with you analysis, but is this necessarily bad (or rather, is all of this bad)?&lt;p&gt;As a young researcher, my peers and I already noticed the &amp;quot;customer-ification&amp;quot; of academia. Taxpayers are investigating in academia, either via tuition fees or research grants, and expect to see returns: Either more jobs, more competitive national economy or a better life.&lt;p&gt;So far so good. Unfortunately, too much &amp;quot;customer-ification&amp;quot; leads to job insecurity for more junior academic members and kills &amp;quot;moonshots&amp;quot;. However, without &amp;quot;customer-ification&amp;quot; the system ends up with dinasors that do research &amp;quot;for fun&amp;quot; on taxpayer&amp;#x27;s money, with no real return.&lt;p&gt;Now, I&amp;#x27;m unsure how much &amp;quot;customer-ification&amp;quot; is healthy. I would argue that both too little and too much hurt. I was fortunate enough to see some of my more junior peers striving with &amp;quot;just the right&amp;quot; amount: They managed to get themselves on R&amp;amp;D boards of companies, yet do research on fundamental theories. Think &amp;quot;to truly make airbags reliable, we need a theory on controlling non-linear systems of type X&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not sure what happened in the case debated here, but I genuinely hope that the departments that are under thread have some evidence for their usefulness (e.g. public outreach for medieval literature, joint-articles for pure math).</text></comment>
<story><title>University of Leicester firing all pure math faculty</title><url>https://twitter.com/wtgowers/status/1355184163020804099</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kleiba</author><text>I recently read Dijkstra&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;On the fact that the Atlantic Ocean has two sides&amp;quot;. [1] In vast parts, it&amp;#x27;s not much more than mildly disguised US-bashing (Dijkstra was always a grumpy old man) but that&amp;#x27;s not what caught my eye. What did was the fact that he describes the US research landscape as a system that orients itself around short-term projects and industry desires. Dijkstra clearly expresses his contempt for this approach over what he claims to be the European way: long-term thinking and research done for research&amp;#x27;s sake.&lt;p&gt;That paper was written in 1982&lt;p&gt;Fast forward ~40 years, and the presumed US model &lt;i&gt;is exactly&lt;/i&gt; the way research funding works all across Europe today. Jumping from one project to the next, always hoping that one of your next proposals will receive funding, or you&amp;#x27;re out of a job. Your project proposal has a weak &amp;quot;exploitation&amp;quot; section? Well, goodbye proposal then! Universities are thought of as nothing more than R&amp;amp;D departments and providers of new young hires for the economic sector.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s only consequential then to axe such &amp;quot;useless&amp;quot; disciplines as pure mathematics.&lt;p&gt;This is a scandal.&lt;p&gt;--&lt;p&gt;Edit: these news from last September fit perfectly into the picture [2]:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;The European Union’s next research programme is likely to have a greater emphasis on funding for applied research, experts have warned, as universities were told to put pressure on politicians to increase the budget. [...]&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;In July, EU leaders agreed to spend €80.9 billion (£72.9 billion) on Horizon Europe, €13.5 billion less than was hoped for in May.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;However, regarding the budget cut, keep in mind the costs incurred by the COVID19 pandemic.&lt;p&gt;--&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cs.utexas.edu&amp;#x2F;users&amp;#x2F;EWD&amp;#x2F;transcriptions&amp;#x2F;EWD06xx&amp;#x2F;EWD611.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cs.utexas.edu&amp;#x2F;users&amp;#x2F;EWD&amp;#x2F;transcriptions&amp;#x2F;EWD06xx&amp;#x2F;E...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.timeshighereducation.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;horizon-europe-will-further-weaken-basic-research-funding&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.timeshighereducation.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;horizon-europe-wil...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dandanua</author><text>It looks like our civilization has passed its peak and now bouncing back to medieval ages.</text></comment>