UCLA has $8 billion in endowments and the state universities in total have $30 billion in endowment funds. How many years could they fund Tao and his institute if they really wanted to?

Two reasons.

First, private philanthropy is neither sustainable nor sufficient in scope.

Second, because government funded science is free from having to produce immediate results in order to satisfy the whims of a specific patron such that funding is continued.

> It seems like an obvious channel for corruption of science.

Yes, relying on private entities to fund scientific research does seem like an obvious channel for corruption.

We also have a strategic interest in draining intelligent individuals from other countries and nationalizing them in ours, which science funding plays a major part in doing.

One of the reasons why its complicated, however, is that the University environment has changed significantly in the US. What used to be academically-motivated institutions dedicated to the pursuit of education are now, essentially, just boring businesses, with more middle managers than educators. As one example, UCLA has a $9.8B endowment. Their athletics programs brought in $120M last year (though, they spent more, and the university itself had to provide gap funding of $30M. yup.) IPAM was receiving $5M/year in NSF funding (DMS-1925919). One obviously extreme way of looking at this: UCLA could have funded Terrance Tao's mathematics research group for six years with the money they used to save a hundred million dollar athletics program that's somehow still losing money.

This is a priorities issue for universities, through and through. But, Universities have slowly evolved their priorities to bloat their managerial class, which has forced them into impossible financial situations where the only way out is to bias investment into revenue generating verticals like maximizing the size of the student body at any cost on the backs of no-default student loans, international students, and athletics programs. Research takes a back seat.

I am all for public funding of science, but even many university researchers would argue, as a part of the system, that its broken (for reasons which extend even beyond those I've brought up). That's why I struggle to take a solid side on this issue; I want science, but what I want more is a University system that actually takes education and research seriously.

The market can't provide public goods like basic research since it's non-excludable. This is a market failure, causing inefficient allocation of resources.

Therefore, the government has to provide it. This can improve efficiency of resource distribution, if done well.

Whether it's done well is not a foregone conclusion. That's why we need effective and technocratic state capacity, free from corruption and independent of political influence.

  > I don’t really understand why so much of science is funded by the government instead of by private philanthropy.

Would would ANY private enterprise (i.e. pharmaceutical company) want to fund research that would enable that?

The immense money (the US spends over $200B a year in cancer 'treatments') that these companies would not be making anymore would deter any such research.

Same goes for many other scientific discoveries. Some are for the greater humanitarian good, not for private enterprise profit maximisation.

An Australian nuclear scientist working for the UK Rutherford (New Zealander) labs | Tube Alloys | MAUD program told them how to.

It took a while to convince the US scientists who were mainly interested in making big hot piles for power.

The actual building of atomic weapons (Trinity, Fat Man and Little Boy) took place under a fully authoritarian ultra secret State directed militarily controlled program that cost a significant chunk of national GDP.

The example you chose appears to be both incorrect and the very opposite of whatever point you wanted to make.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tube_Alloys

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Oliphant

In addition many scientists involved (like Oppenheimer) later faced political persecution during the McCarthy era.

American atomic research succeeded despite, or perhaps because of, intense state control and funding

The best and brightest simply aren't going to want to come to the U.S. for an uncertain future where they'll be harassed at the airport every trip and then defunded or deported at any time for "political" reasons (a.k.a. racism, bigotry, religion, ignorance and anti-intellectualism).

Amazingly, we're only 200 days into this administration.

We have 3 years, 5 months and 12 days left, assuming we still have free and fair elections in 2028.

For the next several years, the administration is going to continue to dismantle our country's foundations brick by brick, enabled by Congress and SCOTUS. The attack on immigrants is in full swing, but the total takeover of science, public education, universities and mass media is actually just beginning.

My understanding is the grants you're talking about are generally for small student salaries as they work on a given project simultaneously with their continued education. Is there not another way to fund these projects? Is there not a better way to engage students into these projects? I don't recall most students having a wide array of choices when it comes to taking on these opportunities.

Is this not a chance to improve a rather ancient and clumsy system?

Probably not. Grants were always under political control, right? This is just shifting political control from one part of a government agency to another part of the government agency.

This last election was the end of American democracy.