Terence Tao focused on fundraising after federal funding to UCLA was suspended | Hacker News Reader

Terence Tao focused on fundraising after federal funding to UCLA was suspended

washingtonpost.com

54 pointsbreve17 comments

UCLA has a $10B endowment. I find it bollocks that they and these other academic institutions can't just dip into that for their researchers to (hopefully) ride out the current funding situation at a minimum.

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The vast majority of people talking about how big university endowments are don't care what the rules are on it. It's not that people don't know how endowments work; they just find the rules to be bullshit to justify universities continuing the status quo.

Please don't cross into personal attack.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It's not bollocks, the endowments are contributions that have constraints on their spending. They cannot legally redirect much of the endowment towards these researchers in the way you want. Instead, they use the endowment as an investment that produces interest which is spent on operating expenses.

The way you describe it as if a widow is reaching out to interest from a nest egg to get by and I got a little tear.

But since I do know better:

- some of these endowments grow over time to infinity.

- that's tax-free gain/interest and any hedge fund would kill to get that special treatment.

As long as they have such special tax treatment, it is only fair they should stay in line with a framework that taxpayers provide.

No endowment grows over time to infinity; that's hyperbole (and impossible).

The tax-free status - that's definitely something that could be changed by updating the laws (legislative). That sounds a lot better than the executive division starving UCLA of funds.

- Infinity is not a number. "To infinity" means grows without bounds (under the current underlying system; now I do agree the system will at some point adjust.)

- Politics operates in reality, not ideals. There would never be such a legislation without a forcing function like this.

Is this just a general dismissal or so you know the actual number?

> They cannot legally redirect much of the endowment

Since endowments at top universities are huge, they don't need much. So how much before it's "illegal"?

Maybe Tao cares about the long term health of the university, is against the policies that are hurting it (and the entire country if USA loses its top position as desirable academic hub) and wants to use his fame for something useful

Why doesn’t UCLA or the University of California system (UCLA is a part), solve this for Tao’s program so that he can focus on the things he is uniquely positioned to do? I suppose it could’ve because he IS the marketing…

The headline "Terence Tao focused on fundraising after federal funding to UCLA was suspended" also makes for better marketing than "UCLA diverts tiny part of massive war chest to address temporary funding issue".

The headline should be that America no longer has free and independent universities and is speed running China.

Maybe the USSR, China still seems to be innovating.

That doesn’t seem like an accurate synopsis of the article at all.

These days the thing he is most unique positioned to do is not math, it's getting funding.

https://archive.is/xd67g

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