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by hga 5858 days ago
Yes, but when you explicitly politicize the funding system you're going to get political results, like healthy support for "gender studies or literature" regardless of the demand.

Just look at the NYT article on a student with $100,000 debt from attending NYU; you had to go down 30+ paragraphs, to the 3rd from the last, to find out her major was in womens and religious study. An honest, non-political article would have brought that out earlier and as something more than an aside.

How that would play out with STEM majors ... I'm not sure. Starting in the '80s there's been an strong push on the supply side which we can see reflected in flattish salaries, so more subsidization instead of (or in addition to) more H-1B etc. visas might be an outcome. But I wouldn't want to bet on it.

Or take the worse fevered nightmares of the Left, would a President Palin mandate that all biology departments teach Intelligent Design instead of evolution? He who pays the piper picks the tune....
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stcredzero 5857 days ago
Yes, but when you explicitly politicize the funding system you're going to get political results, like healthy support for "gender studies or literature" regardless of the demand.

These things are already politicized. Right now, the system of higher education milks the public by convincing them to take on government subsidized debt. What if we eliminate the debt and make the subsidy direct? Does this have a negative impact on countries that provide free higher education?

(My question is open and genuine, not a stroke in a debate.)

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julius_geezer 5857 days ago
President Palin? How about Attorney General Cuccinelli? A few minutes with Google should take you to coverage of his views on U. Va.'s research into global warming.
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hga 5857 days ago
Given that I'm pretty well convinced that Michael Mann is a fraud, that Cuccinelli is just asking for info doesn't bother me at all. What's at issue is not his views on global warming but on Michael Mann's research while an employee of the state.

Just what sort of feedback system(s) do you propose for areas where we know peer review has been perverted (e.g. "I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !" http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=419)

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