Liner Note 24: Skyfall

 

San Francisco Bay on October 20, 2017   

Deadlines collide and last week I wrote three pieces, with a common preoccupation of “Reversing Helplessness,” the title of my ISRF Director’s Note for May. I’ll come back to this issue over the next few days.  

On Friday I was interviewed by email by Kathryn Palmer at Inside Higher Ed. The topic is the title of her ensuing article, Can Scientific Research Survive Without Federal Funding?  She quotes me a couple of times, and also covers the small but possibly growing trend of universities using their institutional funds as “bridge funds” for faculty who have had grants arbitrarily and capriciously frozen while still having staff to pay, cells to keep alive, and the like. 

I’ll discuss bridge funding in my next post: it’s a patch with problems. 

Below I’ve posted my more general answers to her questions about university research. This frames what I expect to be a set of posts on the subject.  In California, the UC Regents are meeting and Governor Gavin Newsom will issue his May revision of his already bad university budget. Meanwhile: 

Kathryn Palmer (KP): Universities are taking from endowments and other reserve funding to fill gaps created by cuts to federal research funding. But are these long-term solutions to continuing research at the same levels as they've been accustomed to?

CN: A few universities could replace federal funds for a few years, but this won’t work for the research ecosystem that is the source of the strength of US research.

KP: Trump and his allies have suggested private industry could take over research. Or perhaps philanthropy (see this article about the Bill Gates Foundation's plan to spend 200 billion before it closes in 2045). Is that plausible? Why or why not? What are the pros and cons of private entities funding scientific research vs. higher education institutions? 

CN: That won’t work. Most corporate research is development, not basic research.  Firms take fundamental concepts, materials, discoveries mostly uncovered in universities and apply them in product lines that they think have high future value in the marketplace. Usually this needs to be a near-term future—a couple of years.  Fundamental research takes place not over years but decades.  

 

Quantum computing is a good example.  People were excited about its commercial potential 20 years ago, and they’re still only somewhat closer.  This is a normal timeframe, which corporations cannot operate on.  Gates philanthropy is also directed at pet topics. The wealthy do the same.  The strength of US research has always been that it is researcher-driven, by the people who know best, not by moguls with special interests or axes to grind.  

 

There are some exceptions, especially in computer-science based tech where firms spend enormous amounts of money in very hot fields (AI is the one now), but only in expectation of near-term enormous (monopoly) profits and under conditions of panic competition.  This is the exception that proves the rule that basic research happens in universities, not companies.  

 

Some of the country’s most lucrative sectors, like pharmaceuticals, have depended on large government research subsidies for decades.  Trump’s model would ask them to take all those costs in house. This would drive up the price of medications to even higher levels, or cut company profits, and probably both at once.  

KP: Could state and local government play a role here? In what capacity? 

 

CN: Over time, states could take on research costs.  But the funding flows would have to change. A share of one's federal income tax would need to be redirected towards the state in which one lives. At the moment, their current tax structures won’t allow it, and states already fund many competing needs (K-12, public health provision, etc.)

 

As a Californian, I wouldn’t mind my state setting up an income tax impound account where I could redirect my federal tax to the state if they’d spend it on teaching, research, etc.—and let them fight it out with the feds in court.  This would be much harder for most states though, and increase inequalities across the country.  And it would happen only gradually, if ever.

KP: How might drastic cuts to research funding at universities reshape how research is done in the United States? Or is too soon to tell?

CN: If the impounding and cuts survive the courts and Congress, then the US will fall behind Europe and East Asia fairly quickly, within around five years. Research moves very quickly, even outside of STEM.  The creation of future researchers will shrink and collapse in some fields in many universities as doctoral programs become unsustainable.  

 

Advanced skills will be harder for businesses to find.  Quite a bit of undergraduate instruction won’t happen, or will be automated, or will be reallocated to academic researchers which will reduce their research.  The knock-on effects are very serious, especially for large, public universities where doctoral students cover a substantial share of teaching. 

 

Since the system’s parts are all interconnected, the general intellectual level of US higher education will deteriorate on a number of fronts at the same time. 

KP: Any other thoughts about this current moment for academic research and scientific discovery? 

CN: The Trump Administration has created the worst crisis in higher education in 100 years, if not in US history. They’ve induced an artificial Great Depression in higher ed.  Every single one of their rationales is wrong. Every one of their actions will make things worse for students, for research, and for the general public. There is no silver lining of reform here, for conservatives or anyone else. 

The people that Trump’s academic policy will disadvantage include residents who didn’t go to college and who don’t like them.  These people also benefit directly from the educated college masses and from the cultural and scientific knowledge universities create, of which they will now have less. People will figure this out when it is too late, as did the British Brexit voter.  

 

To keep this from happening, universities need to form a national bloc and fight this tooth and nail together. Otherwise, it will take them a full decade to recover when Trump is finished, if ever.