The Academic Pipeline Stall: Why Industry Must Stand for Academia

> Universities are left to defend The Promise of American Higher Education alone.

"Only the federal government can provide the funding needed".?

NSF fields 40,000 proposals per year, 110 per day.

The US is unlike other countries. By design, each state has their own capabilities, and owns everything except that which is specifically provided to the federal government. The combined capabilities of California and Massachusetts equal the remainder of the country. There's nothing to prevent any state from funding the universities in their states.

Was it more convenient before? Sure, but there is now an inflection point where more than 50% of the country "don't like you and wish you weren't here". You don't have to get beat up at the bus stop if you walk or take an uber.

This is hardly unique to research or higher education. All 50 states have negligently constructed budgets to rely on copius federal funding for health care (Medicaid) and education. That makes it easy for a petulant politician to kick sand in your face and "disrupt" that.

"There's nothing to prevent any state from funding the universities in their states."

I would've thought one major issue is that a much larger chunk of tax revenue is collected by the IRS than by any state. From googling, CA has the highest state income tax rate but still collects <5% of US federal tax revenue, while having >10% of the population. ~2.5x'ing state taxes to attain similar per-capita revenue would probably lead to a fair number of people leaving the state, or at least get the party who passed that tax hike (presumably Democrats) voted out in the next state election.

OTOH the NSF annual budget is $10B/year, in theory "easily" fundable by CA alone with its $220B/year in tax revenue, in the worst case with a 5% tax increase. The NSF isn't the only federal agency that funds research (seems to provide around 25% of federal research funding) but it is probably enough for one state, even the most productive one. So maybe it really is doable.

States have much less flexible budgets. Many have balanced budget rules. They can't handle downturns. They already rely on the federal government to pick up economic slack.

And if you had the idea that they would be able to raise state taxes with the fat refund checks we'll all be getting with the proceeds of cutting the NSF... there aren't any.

I work in Medicaid tech. You’d say it’s negligent for a state to receive federally matched dollars which by the constitution should be touched by the legislature only? Is it negligent to take money matching your own spend, thinking in a lawful regime, only congress could stop the dollars flowing?

The problem inherent in your post is it is not easy for a petulant politician normally, but blatant law breaking, ignoring judges, passing over the separation of powers: this is not “easy”. This is remarkably unusual, for decades republicans spoke of this and nothing happened. Until the fasicism creeps in and the cult of personality takes hold.

So speaking like we should go be 50 of our own countries, reinvent every wheel 50 times, you’re sacrificing massive efficiency and cost saving gains to do so. It’d take someone who doesn’t care for his people to throw a grenade into Medicaid, and the current admin certainly doesn’t care for its people.

I recommend reading the federalist papers they going your own way on everything is something that is treated with distain. Precisely because number of barriers that would develop between 13 or in our case 50 different states is innumerable imagine you had to have 50 TSAs, and 50 different FAAs, FCCs, FDAs, USDAs instead of 1 each. The solution you seek to poor regulation is not no regulation but Better Regulation (which includes burning some of the bad ones but also includes having replacements)

I think the unpopular but true opinion is that the government is surprising efficient and good at a lot of things. They are not 100% efficient but neither are companies and the private sector at large. There is certainly negations and discussions on where funding should come from but a large part of government success in the USA is that the federal government assumes state debts and gives us the worlds best credit line. This is something that happened 20-30 years after the nation was formed. We abandoned the article's of confederation because they were such a cluster fuck and a horrible way to administer things. The Federalist paper enumerate several huge problems with the state's go it alone approach naming states on the interior basically wouldn't have to fund any military since they could never actually be attacked and it would be unfair to those that would have to, too the point they likely would just not do it and in a time of peril we'd be screwed. But the are several other reasons to not reinvent everything 13 or 50 times.

Also your analogies need work. The idea that the government under previous admin were beating you up at the bus stop with onerous regulation is ironic considering the current admin is literally beating and deporting people at bus stops. I'd argue there is no regulation like the end of a boot.

But also the remedy is childish too, uber is built atop a federal system that established wildly unprofitable networks because they benefit society in non monetary ways. And now that those widely profitable networks exist you can uber instead of taking the bus. But Uber would not exist today if the internet infrastructure took 2-3 longer to get standard convergence because there was no federal body to say we are building the network this way because we are paying for it.

I hope I am no to dismissive either but rather I am highlighting that the idea the states don't do anything isn't really accurate. Because states host all of those federal run agencies. There people manage them the river service isn't run in Hawaii or anyone state but distributed to states who have linked interest in rivers local to them. Its organized by the federal government but run precisely by the people who care and live in those regions.