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Comment by chmod600 | Hacker News Reader

If schools have become as much political institutions as educational institutions -- and there's little doubt about that -- why do they get public money at all?

The real conflict of interest here is politicians spending your money for their political goals.

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> why do they get public money at all?

Because we still believe there to be a societal benefit to an educated populace.

Don't speak for the rest of us please. I personally believe there to be a massive societal disadvantage to the existence of "educational institutions" with hidden political agendas.

You can believe anything you like, and it's a little silly to read "we" in my comment as "without even a single individual exception".

We, society, currently elect representatives who see fit to continue funding a public educational system of schools and universities, which can be inferred to be a general acceptance of their value.

And we, the society, are outraged at the blatant abuse of power we are witnessing in this article. We are shocked by how our current system may have critical vulnerabilities that compromise it's ability to deliver the education it promised, and are ready to discuss which aspect of the status quo may need to be improved upon.

All that may be true; we'll have to see if society kicks up enough of a fuss. I hope it does in this case.

I'm not sure how you get from "this university did a bad thing" to "we should get rid of public universities", though.

The issue is not getting rid of public universities.

The issue is huge partisanship which has distorted academia from their mission.

Then why do you feel qualified to speak for me?

More than that: the market doesn't see past quarterly earnings. Private industry spends a lot on R&D but next to nothing on basic research [0]. Dollar for dollar, academic research that is not beholden to shareholder value theory produces science that is more useful for society.

0. https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20201/u-s-r-d-performance-and-...

Pick a random 18 year old and see if they can point to the country of Argentina on a map. The populace can read but not much else.

Speaking as a person confident that I could point out Argentina on a map, why is geographic trivia a very important topic? I'd rather have a population with a good understanding of means and medians, thermodynamics, and the relationship between rates and accumulations, than one that can readily tell me the year that William the Conqueror invaded England.

I agree but the point is that knowledge of the countries of the world is the most basic sign of education besides reading. The average 18 year old knows even less about science than geography. But geography is important because not knowing it is extremely embarrassing.

Knowledge about other countries is useful, geography less so. It would be just as embarrassing to have a conversation with an Argentinian and say "so what's it like living near Chile?"

Because literacy and numeracy are necessary but not sufficient for an educated polity. A good understanding of society, of history, of philosophy, and more all factor in. As do good critical thinking skills.

...and before widespread public education, many of them couldn't even read.

The short answer is that the University of Florida, and American Universities in general, are not accountable to YOU OR ME, but rather a handful of bureaucrats in the federal government, and in this case specifically the NIH, which air drops the most cash on the institution.

Funding for NIH comes primarily from annual Labor, HHS, and Education (LHHS) Appropriations Acts, with an additional smaller amount for the Superfund Research Program from the Interior/Environment Appropriations Act.6 Those two bills provide NIH discretionary budget authority.

The NIH then presumably has the US Federal Reserve electronically wire it a few billion $ from an internal account they electronically added a few zeros to beforehand.

> UF received about $602 million in research funding from the federal government, including a record $250 million from the National Institutes of Health, the university’s largest research funding source.

https://news.ufl.edu/2021/08/research-awards-/

Are they really accountable to those folks in the sense that they're running the universities / telling people they can't testify like this law?

I think there is a big difference.

The second half of this claim is a demonstrably weak generalization as to the source of power.

The counter example is Georgia, where the Board of Regents is beholden to the politics of the Governor. See recently the fiasco with the pandemic i.e., mandated vaccines and mandated masks.

Proof? The companies run by the members of the Board of Regents implemented different policies than the members themselves voted for the universities in the state of Georgia.

I would have said that public universities in the US are accountable to their boards of regents far moreso than the sinister "bureaucrats in the federal government."

I didn't think much about this until the recent news that the University System of Georgia was effectively ending tenure for its professors, and the drivers of that policy were the USG Board of Regents.

> To many professors, the most alarming proposal is that a faculty member may not only be separated from the university for clear cause, but also reasons “other than for cause," pursuant to other board policies. “Such other policies shall not be governed by or subject to the following policies on Grounds for Removal and Procedures for Dismissal,” the proposed change also says.

From: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/10/04/tenure-under-...

So I looked up the USG Board of Regents: https://www.usg.edu/regents/members

And it turns out that most of them are CEOs or work in finance -- the people who represent "capital" more than any others I can think of. For these people to decide that it should be easier to fire "tenured" professors makes sense to me, in that these are the people who would benefit most from being able to silence, for example, expert witnesses, far more than federal bureaucrats meddling in academic freedom.

> If schools have become as much political institutions as educational institutions -- and there's little doubt about that -- why do they get public money at all?

Things get public money because they are political; that is, connected to an agenda some group thinks is important for public governance.

Why else would government fund a thing?

> If schools have become as much political institutions as educational institutions -- and there's little doubt about that -- why do they get public money at all?

I think you've answered your own question. Why wouldn't the politicians in charge want to fund (and control) such a powerful political institution as education?

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