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Comment by FilosofumRex | Hacker News Reader

Actually by 75% in most of its grad schools. Private elite Universities are merely a front for channeling public funds to manufacture and graduate "experts" to staff elite NGOs, the Administrative State, Think Tanks and elite Consulting firms.

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I would say that this is one clear purpose of Harvard-tier institutions, but that they do also produce valuable research, train educators, etc. as does any other university. Your point explains the "elite" part of elite universities, but they do also generally function as universities as well.

"The Organismic and Evolutionary Biology department will shrink its class size by roughly 75 percent to three new Ph.D. students, according to two professors. Molecular and Cellular Biology will reduce its figure to four new students, and Chemistry and Chemical Biology will go down to four or five admits, one of the professors added."

Do you really think that is the purpose of those departments?

Biology, chemical biology and parts of non-traditional chemistry, are some of the most political and elitist fields outside of social sciences. How and what is taught is not necessarily science based only, let alone, who gets in the PhD programs in the first place.

Organismic and Evolutionary Biologists, like Robert Sapolsky, are right in the middle of culture wars, and always on the same side: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WwAQqWUkpI&t=4827s

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