| > whole conferences devoted to areas... pick any nsf grant... and look at the number of citations Do you see the contradiction here? I don't think bibliometrics are useful for measuring utility. > I don't understand your implicit point that we should let academics fiddle I'm actually totally okay with letting academics fiddle. They are super cheap and you're mostly just paying them for small amounts of their time. But, it should be the faculty who are allowed to fiddle. They shouldn't be given resources to direct other people's fiddling time. In particular, I think we should massively reform the graduate student system to invert the power relationship between faculty and students on any highly exploratory projects. Specifically, for any grant whose purpose is "fundamental science" and/or training (e.g., ALL NSF money as a starter): 1. the agency funds students instead of faculty. So 100% of the money that goes to graduate students on NSF grants should be redirected to a GRFP-like funding model. This means that NSF grants to faculty should only fund PI summer salaries & shared department resources. Never students. Want a student? Recruit them to collaborate with you. 2. NSF should put a hard upper bound on the number of funded teaching hours permissible or required and funded through any sort of stipend. NB: students can still teach more hours! But then they will be normal W2 employees who are paid prevailing rates, are included in faculty+staff retirement/pension/benefits, get FICA benefits, etc. The point: if your uni takes a single dollar from NSF, then student stipends can only be actual stipends, not back doors for tax-advantaged ad junct labor that excludes universities from paying FICA taxes on behalf of their teaching staff (who happen to be grad students). |