Instead we are seeing increased siloing of scientific domains. The EU is cracking down on EU-Chinese research cooperation (as recent arrests and deportations in France have shown), India still has a de facto freeze on Chinese R&D and China is still enforcing export controls on IP to India, and South Korea and Japan are still controlling any IP generated from their industrial research fusion programs.
We're instead seeing at least 6-7 different scientific and capital ecosystems forming, and with collaboration being tightly controlled by governments.
The bigger problem is that schools like MIT, Stanford, UCB, UCI throw (or threw?) lots of resources at students that Chinese schools didn't really do (and maybe still don't? My info is 10 years out of date). Even the lower ranked schools have ample resources and fairly well paying TA/RA-ships available. In China, you would have to work for your professor's side company to get money, and the professor might not let you graduate if you were doing a good job (again, 10 years ago, I have no idea what its like today, China is changing quickly).
But China is not going to be the dominant superpower (except maybe if they manage to beat the rest of the world in AI). Their labor force is already in decline, which means they must gradually shift their focus from building the future to maintaining the society. Like Europe and Japan are already doing.
No, but if they power point, they might be grounded.
Although, for grandkids, I guess that when you are far you are also more intentional with making sure you spend time with their grandparents when they are far.
Just in the western countries:
Toronto, Cambridge, ENS in France, the many max Planck institutes in Germany (eg Tubingen), the two federal institutes in Switzerland.
Faculty positions in any of those are likely to be better than CMU (in terms of start up package, funding, quality of students, quality of faculty, and ability to hire people).
Well that is a strong claim.
Take this with a grain of salt because I'm very independent, individualist and progressive. I think that was already clear from the above :)
I live in a big city now and I love it so much. Excellent public transport so I don't need a car anymore (haven't driven in 7 years), always new things to do and see. New initiatives that actually go somewhere instead of dying out like in the small town.
I can imagine people that like to think outside the box and build stuff like me often like to live in bigger places. That's not even education related as such (you can also be self taught) though it does tend to correlate of course.
And no I wouldn't think of visiting the US in the current situation, let alone move there to study or work (I'm not in the studying age anymore anyway). I do agree with the author that the current politics would deter skilled people.
parsimo2010•1h ago
Also, I agree 100%. Some people don’t like foreigners at US schools, thinking that those foreigners are taking spots away from worthy Americans. I think the only thing worse is if the foreigners stop wanting to come to US schools because of the implications about how far the American education system has fallen.
alephnerd•1h ago
Countries like India, Vietnam, and South Korea have begun replicating the Chinese Thousand Talents program to attract their diasporas back to domestic academia.
Significant domains of CS such as HPC/Systems, Networking, OS internals, etc are heavily dependent on faculty, graduate students, and post-docs who are all on some sort of visa. And increasingly, at least amongst Indians, becuase the backlogs for US citizenship are insane, a number of those people have been taking sweetheart positions at INIs like the new IITs with almost US$100k in public-private lab startup grants on top of a $20k salary (tax free due to the income tax changes) with free housing and car and complete autonomy to consult with private sector players without IP entanglement (one of the biggest headaches for public private STEM R&D partnerships in the US).
Vietnam is doing something similar as well to attract Vietnamese diaspora in SK and Japan, along with Viet Kieu in America and Australia.
A nativist academic culture in STEM in the US would completely destroy any R&D capacity that even exists today.
XorNot•1h ago
The obvious overlap with military technology aside, it's a way to retain and increase the institutional knowledge within India across a lot of areas.
alephnerd•1h ago
anukin•1h ago
alephnerd•1h ago
The bulk of recruitment at ISRO has always been happening at the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) and the Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc) - not IITs.
Even getting into an IIST or IISc is almost as difficult as getting into an old IIT based on the JEE cutoffs.
Both India and China have specialized institutions dedicated to subfields that end up getting the bulk of R&D funding in said subfields, for example, Petroleum Engineering and the China University of Petroleum and the Indian Institute of Petroleum Engineering, or in mining enigneeing, the China University of Mining and Technology and the Indian School of Mines (now IIT Dhanbad).
> Unlike china Indian colleges are really backward due to lack of research funding and a coaching industry which have gamified the entrance exams
China also bases acceptance on entrance exams - the Gaokao is equally as competitive as the JEE Advanced. The exact same gamification of entrance exams and coaching centers is sadly the norm in China as well, despite the Xi admin's initial attempts to crack down on it.
Additonally, Chinese R&D funding is also stratified the same way Indian R&D funding is.
The equivalent of a government engineering college in both China and India would be receiving relatively limited funding or autonomy, but a Double First Class University in China or an INI in India well get the first pick of research grants and subsidizes.
If there is a promising professor at a mid-tier program, they are likely affiliated and getting their funding via affiliation to a national academy like the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
porridgeraisin•1h ago
It is true that the govt institutions themselves have less IIT representation, mostly due to low salaries. However, what matters to the private sector is sources of capital. Tech investors in india usually went to IITs themselves, and so the ecosystem always remains close to IITs, allowing professors easy access. Lot of the startups (even YC ones!) by IIT students actually involved one of their professors in the ideation stage, and they even have equity % sometimes. Similar to Rajeev Motwani holding a stake in Google, they get really rich sometimes.
alephnerd•56m ago
Yep! The University of Waterloo back in Ontario did the same thing in the 1960s, which helped catapult the program into a Tier 1 CSE program comparable to older more established programs like UToronto and UMich.
> Lot of the startups (even YC ones!) by IIT students actually involved one of their professors in the ideation stage, and they even have equity % sometimes
Yep! There are also some NIT, BITS Pilani, IIT, and other program specific networks made by their alumnis in academia and VC. I think Foundation Capital (Netflix, Cerebras, Fortanix) is running one such program.
> It is true that the govt institutions themselves have less IIT representation, mostly due to low salaries
Ministry affiliated universities are a major reason why. For example, ISRO overwhelmingly recruits from IIST, ONGC from IIPE, and other SOEs or R&D programs will recruit from universities specialized in that specific disciple instead of an IIT or NIT now.
porridgeraisin•47m ago
geodel•12m ago
Well, considering all other countries mentioned here are just hiring native people who worked in US. Indians are not hiring Chinese, or Europeans or any other than natively Indians. Same for Chinese or others. So nativist policy can for those countries but not US is strange.
If one sees crowd at US embassy or consulates in India, US has nothing to worry about talent not trying hard to come to US.
All this analysis about US downfall seems kind of assuming that rest of the world is doing lot better. Traveling to India in last few years and experiencing first hand tells me believing even 1% of these hype generators of India is believing too much.
dclowd9901•1h ago
You can deport illegal immigrants without taking away their dignity and without frightening the ever living shit out of everyone. But this isn't that. The intention is fear.
daseiner1•55m ago
it really is a "first they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist..."-esque program at this point
totallykvothe•29m ago
beeflet•21m ago
If the democratic party is going to win, they need to succinctly and stoically state a handful of memorable counterpoints to appeal to the common man. What we have had for the past decade is a ton of noise from the mainstream media explaining a million reasons why we should oppose Trump. The left wing does not equip it's supporters to argue against the right well.
Trump won in 2016 rattling on about Hillary's emails. Trump didn't give a million reasons for us to oppose Hillary, he had 1. He would have a single canned response and name for each of his opponents. The point is you have to agree on a couple of memorable weak points to attack.
overfeed•16m ago
Which 1? Building the wall? Draining the swamp? Locking her up? Making America great again? I may be missing more.
jszymborski•12m ago
I'm sorry, but "the left" hardly has a monopoly on that.