Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

di11deux t1_j6lnds1 wrote

Reply to comment by Cloudboy9001 in Canadian universities have been conducting joint research with Chinese military scientists for years by No-Drawing-6975

Universities are thirsty for big dollar research initiatives because it helps them boost their international rankings. On top of that, Deans have an inordinate amount of say in the direction their departments go, and with budget models that often incentivize departments to enroll more students and churn out more papers, the money speaks louder than the strategic plan the administrators laid out with no teeth. Administrators get to make the line go up, and Deans get the big ticket items for their departments.

Until there’s a specific government policy prohibiting research activity with certain actors, this behavior will continue.

131

SuperRedShrimplet t1_j6m2gsp wrote

At the risk of being branded a commie, this is what happens when countries progressively privatise higher education. The institutions stray more away from what's best for students and just chase the $$. My father was a university professor before he retired and he lamented that this even applied to research which were increasingly becoming less theoretical and more designed to achieve short term practical application, which is short sighted because it's the more theoretical research that churns out the bigger leaps in scientific understanding in the long term.

95

bloodmonarch t1_j6m5wdg wrote

its literally what's happening irl regardless whether people calls you a commie or not. sad.

35

MagosBiologis t1_j6m7yhq wrote

> At the risk of being branded a commie, this is what happens when countries progressively privatise higher education.

Lol on the contrary, this short-sighted privatisation is how Canada ended up with actually communist police stations and military researchers.

15

YeetTheeFetus t1_j6ms1fs wrote

DARPA money is no joke. You can go from using a 30 year old instrument that only takes zip drives and floppy disks for data transfers to brand new everything. I don't agree with taking money from military sources, but I get why people do it. There would be fewer people willing to work with any military if research as a whole wasn't so underfunded.

12

CatProgrammer t1_j6mttnz wrote

There's a lot of money you can get that doesn't even have to be spent on actual military or classified stuff, too. The US military funds a ton of basic, public research. Personally I think if you're able to get the military to give you money for that sort of stuff, more power to you.

8

lilaprilshowers t1_j6n52m7 wrote

People really think DARPA is all about the money at is thrown at it, but they overlook how DARPA technology actually gets integrated into the civilian market. You've all heard, "technology X can do anything except leave the laboratory." But manufacturers can sell technology to the military at much higher prices then they can to civilians. So manufacturers work out the kinks in their processes while selling to the military then they have a product they can actually sell at a scale to make a profit. The UK's biotech industry works a lot of the same way, with the NHS being pipeline for cutting edge technology to be supplied to the masses.

4

lolpostslol t1_j6norif wrote

Tbf it’s the same if public universities are underfunded and/or professore are underpaid. More of a regulation issue IMO, researchers/colleges shouldn’t be allowed to take these contracts.

1

burnabycoyote t1_j6o8um7 wrote

> it's the more theoretical research that churns out the bigger leaps in scientific understanding in the long term.

This does not sound like the viewpoint of a senior scientist.

−1

seinera t1_j6mtdd0 wrote

> At the risk of being branded a commie, this is what happens when countries progressively privatise higher education.

Private higher education is still better in every way. It's only that just like every other application of free market, there needs to be some amount of government regulation.

The main problem is that the western nations have been sleeping at the wheel for a while now, embracing oikophobia as a moral good, they have forgotten enemies exist and how to deal with them. Some countries just need to be blanket banned from having access to anything western, no matter how "xenophobic" it might make academics feel.

−5