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Comment by searine | Hacker News Reader

>Meanwhile, the local NVIDIA office operates out of a building that looks decidedly unremarkable, even shabby by comparison.

And where do those NVIDIA employees live? In a van down by the river? Dorms are residential and need amenities, much like the pools and three car garages of those NVIDIA employees.

Even then, plenty of universities have old, decaying, buildings and run-down labs. I could just as easily point to the other bespoke and "remarkably luxurious-architecturally grand, stylish, and visibly well-funded" NVIDIA buildings. It seems like you have a grudge and any show of spending for a university is reason to criticize it.

I'm all for reform, but this vengeful callous destruction of science is not reform. It is revenge.

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From my standpoint, this isn’t about revenge. It’s about accountability and alignment with broader realities. Over the past 18 months, we've seen over a million layoffs across the US tech sector alone. White-collar industries everywhere are tightening belts. The US government also had massive layoffs due to DOGE.

And yet, I haven’t seen a single example of administrative downsizing in our public universities—not one. Instead, I hear about professors losing grant funding and international students facing stress over visa uncertainty.

So when I say universities aren’t hearing the message, I’m referring specifically to the glaring lack of reform in their administrative structures. Until I see serious efforts to address this—starting with large-scale administrative layoffs—I'm not inclined to offer my sympathy.

“Layoffs for layoffs’ sake” is cargo cult economics. DOGE is not “tightening the belt” it’s a slash and burn intended to bring the federal administration to heel for the current sitting executive. Tech layoffs yeah maybe a market correction to a tightening money supply, but higher ed is a very different world than consumer technology. It seems extremely myopic to compare them like you’re doing.

If the target of reform is admin and not researchers, then the "reforms" should target the admin and not the researchers.

What we see however is cancer research being cancelled and students careers being thrown in the dumpster. You've been fooled by right-wing propaganda that claims "reform", but it's not about reform for them, it is about crushing educated people so they cannot oppose their authoritarianism.

You haven't seen examples of administrative downsizing, because it's rarely newsworthy. Universities routinely cut administrative and support staff according to their individual circumstances. Local news may take notice, but wider outlets rarely do.

My university has had several rounds of layoffs in the past couple of years. Now we apparently avoided one, as California reversed the proposed cuts to state funding. But I don't know how newsworthy that was either.

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