The donor class often has very stupid or industrially motivated ideas about what kind of research should be done. In the former case, you're mostly just adding another idiot to your list of pseudobosses. In the latter case, what's really happening is that the rest of the funding is now going to end up subsidizing some private research endeavour. This is a form of capture, and should basically be avoided.
The current state of the system for graduate students is bad, but it is not improved by allowing private investment.
> people who are very good at making money make stupid investments?
Absolutely, particularly when the "investment" is a donation to charity or a university that's more to assuage guilt or plaster a name for posterity than it is for any return.
People that do end up with a great deal of money aren't always the sharpest crayons in the sun - many have luck and good advisors.
No, Walter, it is you who created a false representation of what noqc said when you replied to their comment saying "people who are very good at making money make stupid investments?"
> people who are very good at making money make stupid investments?
Just because someone makes a lot of money doesn't mean they are intelligent or did so upon their own virtue. And it doesn't necessarily mean they're good at investments and capital allocation.
>> it is not improved by allowing private investment
> wow. Maybe we shouldn't allow things like inventing semiconductors, jet engines, television, etc.
An incredibly sizable portion of technological development in the U.S. in the past 100 years is due to government (i.e., public) funding, not private funding.
> An incredibly sizable portion of technological development in the U.S. in the past 100 years is due to government (i.e., public) funding, not private funding.
Never mind semiconductors, jet engines, television, internet phones, AI, electric cars, engines, steel making, typewriters, the whole textile industry, telephones, CDs, electric guitars, autotune, cameras, need I go on?
> Just because someone makes a lot of money doesn't mean they are intelligent or did so upon their own virtue. And it doesn't necessarily mean they're good at investments and capital allocation.
Maybe read biographies of Musk, Jobs, Gates, Bezos, Buffet, Rockefeller, Walton, Sears, etc., then tell me how stupid they are.
The current state of the system for graduate students is bad, but it is not improved by allowing private investment.