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Comment by Chathamization | Hacker News Reader

> Research should never be funded by tuition anyway.

I don't even think research should be coupled to the universities the way it currently is. From what I've seen it ends up being somewhat of a mess. Seeing what goes on there - for example, how grad students are treated - has made me doubt the ability of most universities to effectively manage and oversee research labs.

It's also adds one more thing to the odd stitched together thing we end up calling a university. It's a certification program/4-year summer camp/undergrad education center/research institute/cultural center/professional training center/sports franchise/etc.

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Just wait. Universities will start offering on campus "job-training" where you work as interns. Students will receive "income" through their student loans, which they have to pay back, while the University sells the student's labor to make more money.

Treating researchers as students is just the beginning.

It would be very interesting to see proposals for public, basic research that is divorced from universities.

However, it's pretty challenging to see how it could work. For one thing, a lot of the best researchers are also the best ones to teach their subject or topic (and relatively fewer talented people want to teach alone without doing any research). For another, the grad school system makes sense because you need training to do research, and that training often comes while you're also learning and taking classes, and it makes sense that you receive that training from the most experienced researchers (currently, professors). Finally, having research sit within a larger university institution makes it less fragile to economic or political shocks.

IME most of the classes you take in grad school are irrelevant to your research. Maybe 2 will be useful, 3-5 if you're lucky. That's basically 1-2 semesters of learning compared to 3-6 years doing research for a PhD. My point is that the coupling of teaching and research isn't necessary, teaching could be covered in a 4+1 undergrad/masters. I've personally had professors from each combination of (good at teaching) x (good at research), and I think the (good,bad) is more common than (good,good).

Coupling of research and university in order to protect research against financial/political shocks does seem to have some merit. But I think we have to examine the costs. For example, in my department one of the professors has a poster that reads what is expected of their time commitment: 30% of their time devoted to service, 70% to teaching, and 100% to research. If the reaserch is that important to us, shouldn't it be done by someone who can spend all their time thinking about it?

One solution might be to tax university endowment dollars that aren't being spent on research. Just look at Harvard, which has ~$30B under management. What if there was a steeply graduated tax on that wealth, which could be avoided if the university did more research? It would force Harvard to accept more students, fund more research, and live up to its creed as a research university, rather than operating like a hedge fund that offers some classes. Repeat at Yale, Princeton, and other well-endowed uni's and we wouldn't have anything to worry about.

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