U. of Pittsburgh pauses Ph.D. admissions amid research funding uncertainty | Hacker News Reader

U. of Pittsburgh pauses Ph.D. admissions amid research funding uncertainty

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142 pointsjslezak13 comments

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Just to be clear that's a similar story about a different university (University of Pennsylvania vs. University of Pittsburgh).

Yup: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43147872.

If PA works like some other places I know, there would be something of a rivalry between those two schools, so it was a little unusual to see the two threads on the frontpage at the same time.

Related, unfortunately Penn to reduce graduate admissions, rescind acceptances amid research cuts (94 points, 2 hours ago, 78 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43144940

University of Pittsburgh has consistently been one of the top 10 recipients of NIH funding for at least 25 years

> University of Pittsburgh has consistently been one of the top 10 recipients of NIH funding for at least 25 years

Perhaps due to its research commitment[0]?

0 - https://www.medschool.pitt.edu/research

And? What's the concern here, that they dare to do medical research?

Not sure why people took my mentioning that stat as some kind of criticism.

Here in Pittsburgh it’s a point of pride that Pitt has such a long running positive track record in medical research.

I posted it to note how big of a deal NIH funding is to the University. Cutting NIH funding will have an outsize effect.

Ah, fair enough, fair enough, it's hard to know these days and evidently in between all the other comments and the general mood, I guess a lot of people are in a very defensive stance at the moment.

Several swing states have high quality research institutions doing important work.

North Carolina is another state where research was historically very important to the economy.

Even if you don't think the US should fund as much research, this austerity approach is directly impacting the economies of many communities - and not all of them are in deep blue states.

As I’ve said in the Penn thread: this is likely a temporary move, intended to be used for rhetoric. Eventually the faculty will complain, because they rely on large pyramids of postdocs and grad students for almost all labor. There’s simply no way to continue the work of university research without a strong supply of grad students. Once this is realized, and the NIH doesn’t bend, then grad admissions will increase again, and admin cuts will start, as they should.

Please don't crosspost like this—it makes merging the threads a pain because we have to find the original post and then merge the replies.

It's fine to link to another post, of course, and an email to hn@ycombinator.com is always appreciated if there are duelling dupes going on.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com