Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower (Farewell Address, January 17th, 1961)
(The above is from the same speech where Eisenhower warned of the military industrial complex. The section of the speech above is much less well known but just as prescient and just as unheeded. I think it explains why science now works the way it does even though this system is detrimental to real meaningful scientific research.)
Why don't academics start their own university? There should be enough billionaires like Cowen who could come together and fund the infrastructure for laboratories and lecture halls.
I would be surprised if there were not more than enough idealistic scientists who would join the university if you offer academics a place to do research unobstructedly. Likewise, there should be more than enough students who would love to join a no-bullshit university to join the scientists and make it a self-sustaining system.
And yet, there is no such university. What's the main obstacle?
The annual operating budget for the University of Toronto is $3B. Certainly you can start smaller, but the cost of starting a competitive university from scratch would be astronomical. Coursera has raised $450M in capital, just to build an online university (unaccredited I believe). Tyler Cower is not a billionaire, as far as I know (he's a college professor).
But let's say you do that, and you build lecture halls and labs. And you get whatever accreditation is needed to be a "real" degree granting program and do top tier research. Then what? You need to go get students. With your brand new university nobody has heard of. And students want to go to university that looks good on their resume, mostly. So how do you build that reputation?
Finally, what are you really doing differently? When you say you let them do research "unobstructedly", research appears to rely on grants. Student tuition covers ~65% of the University of Toronto's operating budget (this is a very well regarded university with a lot of foreign students they are able to extract exorbitant tuitions from). So you still need to fund the research. You need to pay the professors and their lab assistants and post docs or whatever. Since you can't cover it with tuition (your school is worse than existing schools cause it's new) you have to get grants, so you're back to the same problem as before. Does this university have a new business model for funding research and operations besides tuition and donations / grants?
I'm not trying to be a downer, but there's a reason all these top universities are like, 100 years old. The entrenchment is real.
>funding bureaucracies, which eat nearly half of researcher time
which should motivate some academics to come up with a better system. A network of academics with published papers has already established their reputation. Parents and recruiters in companies who studied the same field can evaluate the background and can assure their children that it is solid.
Such an university doesn't have to be started in a void. The internet allows for something like a kick-starter evaluation to check for demand. Only when there is enough demand is there a need to rent or buy buildings.
For a student, it is not without risk to start with that university. However, like every startup, there is a possibility for high reward when the self-selected academic network creates an exceptionally productive scientific environment.
*edit: With a reputation for solid scientific research, is it necessary to spent time on research grants? Wouldn't companies come knocking to research their tough problems?
Lol ok. Cool and very helpful comment. You have contributed something to this world.
This might ensure that only those who are passionate would take the opportunity, and that they could still do whatever they wanted once they did.
Obviously if you wanted to run an expensive experiment it would cost money and you'd need to fight for funding, but no more fighting for spots or fighting for your life or needing to justify everything to everyone else.
>Some from the progress community point to sclerotic funding bureaucracies, which eat nearly half of researcher time and create perverse incentives.
This is 100% believable to me. I don't think people quite understand how bad it is until they actually see academia from the inside, but the game researchers are playing is not "let's have a crack at some new idea and see if it works", but "let's put a slight twist on the existing paradigm that we know won't yield anything useful, because otherwise we won't get funding".
_Everything_ has to be "rationally" justified within the context of the existing paradigms (which are generally speaking, wrong), and every single force within the academy is acting to prevent researchers from actually doing what they believe will lead to new technology.
I'm convinced that the only progress actually comes from scientists with the skills to make the the grants board think they're being a "rational researcher", while a decent chunk of their time is actually doing whatever the hell they want.