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Institutional knowledge is even actively destroyed. There is only so much you can maintain with written procedure; rather, for all of human history, institutions have mainly relied on the people and culture that make them up. But the "modern wisdom" is that you avoid such reliance on people--the employees, the rank-and-file--at all costs. Executives must maintain absolute leverage against workers, so institutional knowledge has to be ignored as a factor. Every employee must be maximally expendable and easily replaced. You know that one senior team who knows how to reliably carry out some important function? Too bad, we're firing them (or denying them raises, or replacing their manager with a toxic sycophant, same diff) and then we'll just have to manage.

Even non-commercial organizations where a healthy culture might still form are affected due to carry-over from the much larger corporate sector. I mean, nobody working anywhere can expect to stay with the same firm until retirement; that's just not the done thing anymore.

So the decay has spread everywhere.

>We are in a period of widespread outright institutional collapse

who is "we"? This thesis is easily tested by zooming away from the US for a second (I know, very hard exercise). The burden of knowledge is visible everywhere even in countries that have drastically improved their governance. Lee Kuan Yew used to lament the increased levels of education at the expense of family formation, experts are getting older everywhere from India to China, to Indonesia and South Korea, making the same gains in computing performance is harder and harder regardless if you're in Taiwan or Arizona. Capital required for economic growth, or drug discovery cost or any other reasonable proxy for the cost of new ideas also increases everywhere.

Institutional collapse is completely coincidental to the basic mechanism that is perfectly well laid out in the article. To build better knowledge you need to account for the old knowledge and then some, so pretty much by definition it's an information theoretical necessity that better ideas get more expensive.

Try to imagine a world where the theory is actually true that there is no burden of knowledge and the reason is institutional collapse. Then you'd have countries where the life expectancy grew faster than when we invented soap and antibiotics. You'd have places that make advances in computing as we did in the 80s and 90s. You'd have places where VC's invest less money every year but get more returns every year. It'd be a completely bizarre world compared to the one we're in.

I think you're right to point out that some "burden of knowledge" is essentially inevitable, especially within a particular field or targeting a particular metric (e.g. life expectancy, though of course that's one that's so broad that there will be considerable influence from factors other than knowledge advances at the technological frontier). Burden of knowledge shows up in individual endeavors too, with most skills following a learning curve to mastery that looks somewhat logarithmic

But I don't think the article is arguing that there is no such thing as burden of knowledge, nor am I. In fact, the article has a whole section where it explicates this, concluding that since it's talking about a phenomenon for which there appears to be a marked shift in the last few decades, an inherent and permanent problem like burden of knowledge isn't adequate alone to explain this change. The article is arguing against treating this phenomenon as the sole or most important factor behind the widespread sense that it's hard to do research, and I stand by the assertion that the more relevant driving factor right now is institutional decay: The faculty of universities are in a near-constant state of complaining about administrative bloat in their institutions, which has dramatically increased relatively recently. Also, there are a lot of methodological issues that have come to light as a result of the widespread cross-disciplinary replication crisis that got some press in the last decade, and which seem to largely stem from misaligned institutional incentives which come from various sources, including pressure from increasingly muscular industries about the nature and results of research they're interested in, pressure from publishers, both traditional journals and the journalistic organizations that by and large publicize scientific results in practice, and careerist pressures that create publication biases as well. I think for this specific case, the article makes the case more eloquently than I can. My comment made the further claim that institutional decay is such a widespread serious problem in many of our institutions today that it should be our first guess for why any outcome we care about that can reasonably be assumed to be mediated by some important institution is worsening over the last few decades. I call this the null hypothesis because that is the traditional name for this kind of assumption

As with anything complicated compressed into a single articulable concern, the reasons why research is perceived as slowing down are no doubt attributable to a variety of factors, and saying this perception isn't primarily a burden of knowledge issue isn't equivalent to the claim that burden of knowledge doesn't exist at all

I agree with everything you said but I really doubt Reagan is to blame for the degree factories. That was more of a Clinton push.

We have many social ills delivered by Reagan and some you mentioned.

This is a natural outcome when governments create rules that in effect solidify a market practice. It becomes irrelevant over time and fails to change because the rules will not allow for it, and even if they did, committees are not known for being industry leaders.

In education the solution is simple and effective - cut all federal student aid. The educational institutions that have strong industry ties and therefore the best outcomes will persist. Those that were warming chairs to hand out fake degrees will go under. Let it fail for the admins, because it's already failing the students.

Your posted suggestion, of defining the best outcomes as immediate job success, would solidify a market practice of lowering fences between town and gown (viable during only the past 3 or 4 generations) as the only viable way forward for educational bodies that intend to survive.

Because I agree with your general statement that market situations lose relevance once legislated, I think the principle more naturally extends to mean:

It is better to consider how to keep universities, whether research institutes or liberal arts universities, as a distinctive part of "the whole spectrum of techniques by which one generation transmits its insights and abilities to the next," Prof. Edsger Dijkstra's words. Not enshrine a set of commercial principles by which every piece of a spectrum must play.

Immediate job success is a fickle master; it would be a shame to LinkedInify any society. In 1996, Dijkstra said, [0]

> The University with its intellectual life on campus is undoubtedly a creation of the restless mind, but it is more than its creation: it is also its refuge. The University is unique in that on campus, being brilliant is socially acceptable. Furthermore the fabric of the academic world is so sturdy that it can absorb the most revolutionary ideas.

> But it is not only a refuge for the restless minds, it is also a reservation for them. It does not only protect the restless minds, it also protects the rest of the world, where they would create havoc if they were let loose. To put in another way, the fence around campus is essential because it separates two worlds that otherwise would harm each other. The fence ensures that we have relatively little direct influence on the world "out there", but we would be foolish to complain, for our freedom to be as radical as we like is based on the fact that, for at least the first 25 years, industry and the world-at-large ignore our work anyhow. Currently, there seems to be a world-wide tendency to try to lower the fence; the effort strikes me as ill-directed.

He had also been writing similar things in 1986 [1] and 1994 [2].

[0] https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~vl/notes/dijkstra.html

[1] https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD09xx/EWD988...

[2] https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD11xx/EWD117...

No one can live in a capital market without capital. Education has always been about capital markets - uneducated people are highly limited in their use. There has never been a school that was built for "free", it's always come from capital one way or another.

It used to be primarily private capital, people who believed in it's purpose. Outside of the top 1% Now nothing is built without students and taxes footing the bill.

If it cannot survive on its own merits then its existence is an abuse to the people it claims to support. Turn it into something else and let real solutions arise naturally.

No it hasn't? That's some insane revisionist history, and this is what I blame Reagan for. The attitude that universities and even education broadly primarily or solely exist for producing vocational training

The original and, to this day, primary unique purpose universities serve is facilitating research. Capitalists try to claim credit for all the progress in science and innovation that's happened since the industrial revolution, but the institutions that evolved into what we now consider academia predate it significantly, and it's important to note that they were not always viewed even by their benefactors as having immediate value in a direct economic sense. Most of their educational capability is a side effect of developing competency in training new researchers. People who fell off this track still often got a quality education and became better-rounded, and also people who could get to a university tended to be high-status, so for a while it was a decent-fidelity signal for the competence-status mix that hiring decisionmakers cared about. Trying to get everyone in on this not only devalued that signal, but has caused a lot of this institutional rot. I think we agree on the end of that story but not the beginning of it

Vocational training and especially apprenticeship should be encouraged and enabled more, and shoehorning universities into this role was misguided from the start

ideas of how it should be and the actual circumstances today are completely different. That ideal is abusive because it is not reflected in reality, taking advantage of young naive adults.

> uneducated people are highly limited in their use.

>taxes footing the bill.

It sounds like it is surviving only its own merits, merely shifted in time.

(Admittedly, from the perspective of an Australian whose strongest institutions are all public and the private universities are a bit of a joke)

What are you on about, mate? Universities significantly predate even the concept of capital. Not universities as a concept, but specific universities that you can go to today - notably Oxford and Cambridge, but many others in Europe. And their purpose has almost always been scholarship, not employment. Most modern universities stem from institutions meant to find better ways to understand God's work, and perhaps to better worship it. The Catholic Church was the primary "investor" for a long stretch of time, at a time when it was a more powerful "state" than almost any other in Europe.

If you can find me a university free of a capital market I am more than willing to be wrong. The idea of universities generations ago are not at all how they are today.

You have claimed "education has always been about capital markets". I have exained that it hasn't. That we today live in a capitalist society and every single aspect of our lives is touched by capital to a higher or lower extent is a completely different claim.

Furthermore, you suggested that this (obviously false) history of education being driven by capital markets should be taken as a guide to letting capital control our education even more, as if the problem with universities today is that they are not capitalistic enough. The actual history suggests exactly the opposite.

Education has to be broader than industry, or we'll all end up slaves.

You cannot live in a capital society without capital. There is not nor has there ever been an education system disconnected from industry until government subsidy and "support" did it. This is because once there is free money there is no longer a natural market effect and organizational failure is acceptable and funded.

It's crazy how people just make shit up and say it so confidently. Most education prior to the industrial revolution was considered a luxury for the wealthy, and its value was not considered in terms of producing economic value directly

> Most education prior to the industrial revolution was considered a luxury for the wealthy,

In fact this is still the case in many ways. There are loads of kids studying things that are not directly economically useful, mainly for their own enjoyment and as a luxury status symbol.

> loads of kids

I'm not saying you're wrong, but...

This narrative is very heavily purported by right-wing propaganda outlets. I wonder what you mean by "things... as a luxury." Do you mean MBAs, or history majors? And, what do you mean by "loads?" Do you have any data to back this up?

I think they mean the general study and refinement of culture and knowledge for its own sake--the kids who go to college/university for language arts, fine art, music, theatre, history, philosophy... these classes are widely attended, but have a reputation for not being useful for gainful employment. (Plenty of famous writers, poets, artists, actors, musicians, and journalists have such an education, but the rest of their classmates probably did not end up employed in the same sector.)

Side note: it's not just the far-right that disparages higher academia as effete elitism. The far-left has done so as well, notably during China's Cultural Revolution, and within Soviet Russia, Pol Pot's Cambodia, etc. Being an academic at the wrong time in history means you have a good chance of ending up in a gulag or concentration camp.

Yes, I have studied a bit of China's Cultural Revolution, and discussed it with several (strongly biased, of course) Chinese expats. They violently opposed the subjects that many Americans are privileged to receive via our "liberal arts" educations. I can't argue with that. All I can say is that I view China as a deeply conservative, even fascist nation. From my (limited) perspective, it is deeply racist and misogynistic in ways to which only the most conservative, right-wing Americans compare. So it is hard for me to trace today's China's lineage "leftward".

It's really more about totalitarianism, regardless of flavor. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory

I also didn't mention the less "artsy" academic disciplines that might get you in trouble with the Party: mathematics, physics, astronomy, economics, biology, sociology, psychology... These can be seen as possible heresy and/or profligate navel-gazing that weakens the Glorious Nation. But it depends on the ideology and how useful the Party thinks your discipline is (for example, if expertise in your field is required to build nukes or launch rockets...)

Well, what degrees are actually necessary for the work? As in, if you don't have the degree, you cannot be allowed to do the work?

Medicine, law?

Pretty much all other degrees are a thing that you do because it's interesting, and you want to signal your interest in some area. People are trained on the job for the most part. I'm fairly sure I could have jumped into my career from high school, were it not for the social convention that smart kids have to go to university, and thus only graduates can be hired.

The sibling comment is right, btw, it's narrow to think of it as a right-wing talking point. Historically the left thought the same way.

It's a fact, money doesn't come from nowhere and for nothing. You can see it for yourself if you do the work. It doesn't matter how things were eons ago - it matters how it is now.

Yes. It matters how they are now. It matters what problems there are with that state and what we can do to change them. It matters what's worked before and why and in what context, because it's a source of information we can use to inform our decisions. If you're going to talk to me like you think I'm a baby, I ask you to at least say something vaguely useful, instead of prattling about "realism" that makes no substantive claims except that every facet of our current reality is inevitable. As someone who makes money by doing work in the current world, I would like for fewer decisions to be made by people who hold capital instead of doing work, and think there are concrete steps we could take to rescue the important human endeavor of research from the influence of such people, not the least of which being restructuring how governments fund such institutions, prioritizing their independence rather than their hijacked function as yet another ill-conceived social mobility hack (actual social mobility comes from removing obstacles, not creating new ones and then conditionally subsidizing them)