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Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

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280 points dargscisyhp | 4 comments | 02 Aug 25 06:28 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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m101 ◴[02 Aug 25 08:37 UTC] No.44765789[source]▶
UCLA has an endowment of 3.8bn$. Whilst I'm sympathetic to their desire to be further government financed for the work they do, I feel like government financing should be made available to those that actually need the money. The attitude that you have access to government funds even if you have the ability to pay yourself needs to change.
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1. padjo ◴[02 Aug 25 08:49 UTC] No.44765844[source]▶
UCLA gets about $800m a year in federal grants. $3.8bn wouldn’t last long if they were to self fund that.
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2. davrosthedalek ◴[02 Aug 25 08:55 UTC] No.44765862[source]▶
Also: Even if they could, why would they? Grants are for research. Research only very indirectly affects their income. They could probably accept more students (so more tuition) if they would say to the faculty: no research, more teaching.

An uber driver who gets rich by other means will stop driving for uber, not drive for uber for free.

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3. Erikun ◴[02 Aug 25 08:56 UTC] No.44765869[source]▶
Source here https://efm.research.ucla.edu/#:~:text=Statistics%20for%20fi...
4. m101 ◴[02 Aug 25 11:40 UTC] No.44766798[source]▶
If the faculty itself is not willing to ask to spend the endowment on the research (and they know it most intimately), then why should the faculty ask the rest of us to pay?