<story><title>Cédric Villani: mathematician challenging to be Paris mayor</title><url>https://www.ft.com/content/73c7a6a6-ee57-11e9-ad1e-4367d8281195</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>onlyrealcuzzo</author><text>&amp;quot;dommageable&amp;quot; is &amp;quot;damaging&amp;quot;, for anyone who couldn&amp;#x27;t guess.&lt;p&gt;Can you go into detail about what his party has voted for that&amp;#x27;s so bad for higher education and research?&lt;p&gt;I consider myself pretty academia-friendly, and there&amp;#x27;s a lot of things I&amp;#x27;d vote for that most people would consider damaging to higher education and research.&lt;p&gt;For example, I think free college for everyone is a terrible idea. Most people consider that heresy.</text></item><item><author>p4bl0</author><text>He is already an elected representative in the French parliament, being part of the current government&amp;#x27;s majority. His political party and the government have already passed several laws that are very damaging to research and higher education (among other things, but these two topics Villani actually knows something about, and he should care a bit given his background). He has never said anything publicly about it, or only to support the government. I see this behavior as proof that he doesn&amp;#x27;t care at all about being a mathematician (well, except when it gives him credit he doesn&amp;#x27;t deserve), so he should just be considered another random politician, and he&amp;#x27;s not even a good one.&lt;p&gt;Edit: fixed &amp;quot;dommageable&amp;quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>p4bl0</author><text>First we do not agree on free education. I believe that&amp;#x27;s a good thing.&lt;p&gt;Now, what Macron&amp;#x27;s government did wrong with research and higher education is: literally everything they did about it. The switch to high tuition as you said (especially given that it was &lt;i&gt;only for foreigners&lt;/i&gt;, which I consider racist, and anyway the Conseil Constitutionnel recently found this measure unconstitutional). Parcoursup was a very bad decision: it is poorly designed, it is much worse than the previous system for university admissions for obvious algorithmic reasons that my undergrad students can spot (but that Villani apparently can&amp;#x27;t?), and it also does not solve the actual problem which is the lack of universities and professors. There is also the way they force universities to merge by making funding conditional to merger, this comes at high cost for no clear benefits (except for &lt;i&gt;maybe&lt;/i&gt; jumping a _few_ places in the Shanghai university ranking, which is pure bullshit). There is the way they decided to fund public research: almost exclusively via calls for project, which is a very very inefficient wqy of distributing money as everyone has to work for month to make application and less than 10% of applicants are actually funded so more than 90% of all this work is done for next to nothing, and in addition to that the money is very badly distributed with very rich man that have so much money they don&amp;#x27;t even know how to spend it and a majority of labs where it becomes difficult to do any research at all. Their funding policy also force universities to cut there spending which is mostly salaries, meaning not replacing professors who retires for example, which means even less professors while there is more and more students (and that was forseeable, they all were born around two decades ago and have been through primary and middle and high school, we saw them coming). I could continue but I&amp;#x27;m on my mobile phone so I will stop there.</text></comment>
<story><title>Cédric Villani: mathematician challenging to be Paris mayor</title><url>https://www.ft.com/content/73c7a6a6-ee57-11e9-ad1e-4367d8281195</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>onlyrealcuzzo</author><text>&amp;quot;dommageable&amp;quot; is &amp;quot;damaging&amp;quot;, for anyone who couldn&amp;#x27;t guess.&lt;p&gt;Can you go into detail about what his party has voted for that&amp;#x27;s so bad for higher education and research?&lt;p&gt;I consider myself pretty academia-friendly, and there&amp;#x27;s a lot of things I&amp;#x27;d vote for that most people would consider damaging to higher education and research.&lt;p&gt;For example, I think free college for everyone is a terrible idea. Most people consider that heresy.</text></item><item><author>p4bl0</author><text>He is already an elected representative in the French parliament, being part of the current government&amp;#x27;s majority. His political party and the government have already passed several laws that are very damaging to research and higher education (among other things, but these two topics Villani actually knows something about, and he should care a bit given his background). He has never said anything publicly about it, or only to support the government. I see this behavior as proof that he doesn&amp;#x27;t care at all about being a mathematician (well, except when it gives him credit he doesn&amp;#x27;t deserve), so he should just be considered another random politician, and he&amp;#x27;s not even a good one.&lt;p&gt;Edit: fixed &amp;quot;dommageable&amp;quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>syrusakbary</author><text>&amp;gt; For example, I think free college for everyone is a terrible idea. Most people consider that heresy.&lt;p&gt;A terrible idea from what perspective? I&amp;#x27;d love to hear more! (I&amp;#x27;m on the other side of the spectrum)</text></comment>