People from elite backgrounds increasingly dominate academia, data shows

Re:People from elite backgrounds increasingly dominate acade... by seibelj on Monday July 11, 2022 @12:09AM (#32052084)

Also a lot of lifetime academics are generally insufferable. Hugely important vision of themselves, lack of knowledge of reality, and are totally useless if they had to do a job outside of their hyper-specialized area.

I see a lot of value in hard-science / math research. Don’t see a lot of value in yet another 80 page treatise on Proust that only 8 people will ever read.

Hopefully everything gets priced so high that the vast amounts of money wasted on universities will be greatly reduced.

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Re:People from elite backgrounds increasingly dominate acade... by privatdozent on Monday July 11, 2022 @12:15AM (#32052116)

Haha. Because math research is so widely read

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Re:People from elite backgrounds increasingly dominate acade... by achenet on Monday July 11, 2022 @05:45AM (#32054058)

Well some of it is used a LOT - for example all of digital technology is basically applied boolean algebra, and calculus is the base of physics. Granted, the original research for those was 200-400 years ago, but the current day applications are everywhere.

So while a new research paper on some obscure subset of point-set topology may not appear to be useful today, it is possible that in the future it will be. :)

EDIT: misread your comment as "widely used", not "widely read", my bad.

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