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#how about the spinoff includes the college era and PUTS HIM IN IT
miguelsquash · 1 year
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the timeskip was done so perfectly I think it leaves a lot of room for a spinoff showing the inbetween parts where the isles are being rebuilt. Like it'd be a good opportunity to solve some unresolved bits in the show- unraveling the mystery that is hooty, wrapping up unfinished things like the Caleb storyline, etc. Something slice of lifey that picks up the pieces left behind by disney cutting the fucking budget/runtime. Is it unlikely since Dana left disney? (good for her tbh) yes. Do I still desperately want it? Also yes.
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aion-rsa · 4 years
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Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 Episode 3 Easter Eggs & References
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This Star Trek: Discovery article contains spoilers for Season 3, Episode 3. Read our review of the episode here.
As the USS Discovery starts to explore the galaxy in Star Trek: Discovery Season 3, the first stop is, understandably, to check-in on how the Planet Earth is doing. Unlike Battlestar Galactica searching for Earth forever, Discovery decided to get the whole Earth thing out of the way right away. In Episode 3, “People of Earth,” the crew returns to the home planet of the Federation and learns things are not remotely similar to how they left it.
Along the way, “People of Earth” references a long-running TNG-Douglas Adams joke, a quip from Kirk in The Wrath of Khan, a famous DS9-era alien species, and more! 
700 years after we left…
Burnham’s opening narration fills in new details we previously didn’t get about the Burn, including the idea that prior to the Burn, about “700 years after we left, dilithium reserves dried up.” This means that around the year 2957 or so, the Federation was “trialing alternative warp drive designs.” We don’t know much about the 30th century in the existing Trek canon, other than Daniels from Enterprise had knowledge about that era. To put it in perspective, this time period would still be 500 years in the future for Star Trek: Picard. The idea of the Federation trying to change the way warp drive operates vaguely references the TNG episode “Force of Nature.”
47
When Burnham talks about being a courier, someone hands her a sliver containing the Starfleet registry NCC-4774. We don’t know what ship this belongs to, but it seems like this is a visual joke which references the long, and intentional inside joke about using the number 47 (or 74) throughout all of Trek which began around TNG Season 4. There are literally hundreds of appearances of the numbers 47 or 74 throughout the franchise, so many that there is actually a “47 project” devoted to finding all the occurrences of 47 throughout the franchise. 
The origin of the joke references the number 42 from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. In that novel, “42” ends up being the answer to “the life, the universe, and everything.” Burnham is searching for similarly vague answers in this montage. In the ‘90s, “47” became the “42” of Star Trek canon, and Rick Berman joked once that 47  was “42, adjusted for inflation.” The number “47” is also an Easter egg of sorts for alums from Pomona College, sprinkled throughout TV and film history.
Terralysium and Burnham’s mom
Burnham tells Saru that during the year she’s spent in this future, she’s connected the planet Terralsyium and that “they had never heard of my mom.” This references Season 2 of Discovery in which we learned Burnham’s mother, Gabrielle Burnham transported humans from the 21st Century to a planet called Terralysium in the Beta Quadrant. In theory, Terralysium was supposed to be the tether location where Burnham and the USS Discovery ended-up. In “Perpetual Infinity” Burnham’s mom was sucked into a time vortex, which, in theory, could have deposited her into the future version of Terralysium. So far, though, that’s not the case.
Captain Saru
Saru is promoted to captain in this episode. This is a long time coming for Saru. He’s been a First Officer for two captains thus far, Captain Lorca and Captain Pike. And, in the Discovery novel Desperate Hours, Saru was upset that Burnham was promoted to First Officer over him prior to the Battle of the Binary Stars. This 2017 book by David Mack is slightly non-canonical, but it did establish Detmer’s first name as Keyla, and doubled-down on Number One’s name as Una. Anyway, the point is, Saru has been working for a long time to become Captain.
DOT-7 Bots
We briefly see the outside of Discovery’s hull being repaired by DOT-7 robots. We first saw these little bots in “Such Sweet Sorrow” in Season 2, when they emerged from the Enterprise and effected some repairs. One of these bots, of course, was the star of the Short Treks episode “Ephraim and Dot.”
“Galavanting”
Georgiou mentions that Book has been “galavanting through space with Michael.” This could be a reference to The Wrath of Khan in which Kirk says, “galavanting around the cosmos is a game for the young.” 
Saturn 
Although the planet Saturn is famous to us here on Earth — not counting the opening credits for Star Trek: The Next Generation Seasons 1 and 2 — this is seemingly only the fourth time Saturn has appeared during an episode or movie of Star Trek. Previously, Saturn appeared in the TNG episodes “The Best of Both Worlds,” and “The First Duty.” In Star Trek (2009) Saturn appears when the Enterprise hides near Titan. 
“One aye”
When Booker sarcastically says “aye, aye” commander, to Burnham, she replies, “One ‘aye,’ we’re not pirates.” This might reference the original TNG episode “Lower Decks,” in which Riker tells Lavelle that “One aye is sufficient acknowledgment, Ensign.”
Georgiou pretends to be an Admiral
When the Discovery is inspected by the Earth ships, Georgiou dons an Admiral’s uniform to “make it believable.” This is the second time Mirror Geogoiu has worn a Starfleet uniform even though she is not really in Starfleet. The first time was in Discovery Season 1 when she was authorized to impersonate Prime Georgiou to lead the mission against the Klingon homeworld. 
Generational ship
Saru’s cover story for why the USS Discovery is still in operation in 3188 is the idea that they are a generational ship and are crewed by their own ancestors. This concept actually occurs in the Enterprise episode “E²,” where the crew of the NX-01 meets an alternate version of the ship crewed by their descendants. 
Synthehol 
Book is furious to discover he’s not drinking actual booze, but instead, synthehol. To be clear, in Trek canon, synthehol can get you drunk, but mostly if you’re an alien or a former Borg. In the TNG episode “Relics,” Scotty complained about having to drink synthehol in Ten Forward
Quantum torpedoes 
It’s briefly mentioned the Wen’s raiders have “quantum torpedoes.” This tech was first mentioned in Star Trek: First Contact, which, at the time, made it very new. 
Starfleet does not fire first!
After Georgiou suggests Saru take swift and aggressive action, Saru remonstrates her by saying “Starfleet does not fire first.” He’s actually quoting… Georgiou in the very first episode of Star Trek: Discovery. Though, in that case, the Georgiou who said “Starfleet doesn’t fire first” was the Prime Universe Captain Georgiou, not the Mirror Universe Georgiou who we’re more familiar with.
Titan
After it’s revealed that Wen (Christopher Heyerdahl) is actually a human, we also learn that he’s from the Titan. In real life, Titan is the largest moon of Saturn, and, unlike most moons, boasts an atmosphere. Trek canon has mentioned Titan a bunch. In “The First Duty,” Wesley was training near Titan, and again, in Star Trek (2009), Chekov hid the Enterprise behind Titan.
Adira’s revelation 
We learn very quickly that Adira (Blu del Barrio) is a human joined with a Trill; specifically a symbiont called “Tal.” Burnham and Sura discuss their general ignorance of Trill symbionts, but Saru tells Burnham everything he knows about the Trill comes from the “Sphere Data.” This references the giant alien sphere Discovery encountered in the Season 2 episode “An Obol for Charon.”
The fact that Burnham and Saru don’t know much about Trill symbionts makes sense. It’s not clear that in the 2250s that the Trill were open about being a joined species, but by the time of The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine the Federation obviously learned about them. In fact, in the first TNG episode “The Host,” a human, Will Riker, was joined with a Trill. But, Burnham and Saru wouldn’t know about that because it would have been in their future back in 2257, and certainly, the Sphere didn’t know about that either.
Captain Georgiou’s telescope 
Saru unpacks Captain Georgiou’s telescope and puts it up in his new ready room. This telescope was presumably salvaged from the USS Shenzhou and given to Michael Burnham as part of Georgiou’s will in “The Butcher’s Knife Cares Not For the Lamb’s Cry.” But, after that, Burnham gave it to Saru instead. Saru and Burnham both used this telescope for practical purposes in the first Discovery episode ever, “The Vulcan Hello.”
Read more
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Which Quadrant?
Burnham says that Book has “a fresh start, in a new quadrant.” We know Earth is located in the Alpha Quadrant, which seems to imply Book and Burnham were previously operating in the Beta Quadrant. 
Starfleet Academy and Picard’s favorite giant tree
Although Starfleet is no longer operational on Earth, the crew visits the grounds of Starfleet Academy in San Francisco. There, they find what seems to maybe be a huge elm tree. If so, this tree was actually referenced by Jean-Luc Picard in the TNG episodes “The Drumhead” and “The Game.” In theory, if this is supposed to be the same tree, it was tended by Boothby in the 24th Century which would imply it existed at least 100 years before that, in the mid 23rd Century, too.
Golden Gate Bridge 
The final shot of the episode pans out to show the 32nd Century version of the Golden Gate Bridge. The last time we saw this bridge chronologically, was in Star Trek: Picard in 2399. Though, prior to that, the bridge had been partially destroyed in the Dominion War in the 2370s. That is if you believe Changelings are real…
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Star Trek: Discovery airs new episodes on Thursdays on CBS All Access.
The post Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 Episode 3 Easter Eggs & References appeared first on Den of Geek.
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The Family Man 2019 Season 1 Download Full Episode Prime Video
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Creators: Krishna D.K., Raj Nidimoru Stars: Manoj Bajpayee, Sharib Hashmi, Vedant Sinha Genres: Action, Comedy, Drama Country: India Language: Hindi Release Date: 19 September 2019
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Family man season one of The Sopranos is one of the greatest episodes in television history. The series is known for some of the funniest, most hilarious episodes, which often include some really amazing stunts, as well as some truly great acting from some of the best actors in the industry.
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In the first episode, Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) makes his move against his wife Carmela, who is the head of the Carmelite community. Tony has been a member of the Carmelite community for the better part of twenty years, but has always had an issue with Carmela's control over their family, and is so desperate to get back at her that he will do almost anything to destroy their relationship. He decides to take matters into his own hands and take out Carmelita's unborn child with a shotgun he plans to shoot it in front of a synagogue. This will help him put a final nail in his family's coffin.
The story of The Sopranos is very interesting because it's about the relationship between a man and his wife. Tony is so jealous of Carmela that he will go to any lengths to get her back, and that includes taking out her child and putting it in front of a synagogue, which is a pretty crazy thing to do for someone who was supposedly a Catholic.
The best part of the season, however, is Tony's eventual betrayal of his wife. Once he finds out that she is having an affair with a man named Gabrielle, he is forced to do something about it, and he does so by sending Gabrielle and Carmela to the prison for a time of their lives. In doing this, he allows them to experience all the life that they've been missing out on, and eventually, Tony makes the decision to free his wife from prison and marry her.
It's hard to think that a man would ever do such a thing, but after watching The Sopranos season one, I can't blame Tony for it. Of course, Carmela is not convinced, and she tries to persuade Tony to get back at Gabrielle by inviting the man to dinner with her family. Unfortunately, Gabrielle gets caught in the crossfire, and Tony realizes that he needs to put a stop to her scheme before he loses out on Carmela.
Overall, the first episode of Family man was one of the best ever on television. The acting was amazing, and the stunts were incredible. The show really captured the spirit of its era and managed to make it fun to watch.
The Family Man, the television classic of the 1970s, is getting a reboot. Starring David Hyde Pierce as Phil Hartman, the series will be created by Matt Damon and Will Smith.
Phil Hesselsenpotter was an accountant who had recently divorced his wife, Pamela (Debra Messing), and was about to start a new life with his new wife, Robin (Carrie Carpenter). But things went wrong when Robin disappeared and Phil was assigned with finding her. The first clue Phil discovered was a clue hidden in his own briefcase that led him to the wrong track and eventually to Robin.
Phil started investigating Robin's background while juggling work and household chores. Meanwhile, Pamela went off with her ex-boyfriend, Martin Blank (John Candy). As it turns out, Martin was a member of a cult whose aim was to bring about an apocalypse - in a bid to help Martin, Pamela and Martin's family survive in the event of his death. Martin was the leader of this cult.
When Phil discovers that Martin was involved in a deadly plane crash, it becomes clear that the only way to find Robin is to locate Martin's mysterious associate, Dr. William Price (Ethan Embry). In order to do this, Phil needs to make his way through a maze of conspiracies, lies and double-crosses - the very reasons why the original series was canceled.
In addition to David Hyde Pierce, the cast for the new version of The Family Man includes Matt Damon, Will Smith, and Carol Kane. This spinoff will also star John Candy in a recurring role, alongside Pam's daughter, Kimmy Gibbler.
One thing that will remain the same about the new spinoff: The Family Man will continue to tackle issues surrounding family. Phil will find himself falling in love with a woman he met at work and an ex-convict who works as a janitor. The series will also follow Phil and Kimmy's quest to obtain a college education. If you haven't seen the original series, it would definitely be worth watching.
However, one major difference from the original series to The Family Man is that Phil and Kimmy won't have a home to call their own. Instead, they will have to move into a temporary apartment before moving into a furnished condo.
Although the premise may seem like a cop-out, it actually makes a lot of sense. The Web Series takes place over six years in the future. Since time changes so much in this fast-paced world, it's more convenient for the characters to go back and forth between the present and past.
In order to get the best out of the spinoff, The Family Man, make sure to catch up on all of the season one episodes before watching the new series. It may not have the same cast as the original series, but it's still going to be worth watching. and even better than the original.
The Family Man Cast is an upcoming American drama-comedy movie directed by Brett Ratner, based on the novel of the same name by David Diamond, and produced by Saturn Films. The film was released in January 2020. The cast includes Nick Cage, Téa Leoni, John Candy, Michael Gambon, Danny Glover, Billy Crystal, and Steve Martin. The film's story concerns a father (Cage) who goes on a trip to Mexico with his family to take part in a carnival.
The cast of The Family Man Cast is very diverse. The film's producers, Brett Ratner and David Weissman were hoping for Cage, who has appeared in the films A Few Good Men and Gladiator, to be cast as the lead character, a father and husband who have gone away for several years to Mexico to visit his ailing wife. However, Nic Cage did not get the role, which went instead to actor John Candy, who had been rumored to have the most screen time, but who turned out to be somewhat absent from the story.
Nic Cage also did not appear in The Family Man Cast, although he was rumored to be in the picture anyway. The role that Cage did end up playing, however, is the father of Danny Glover's character, Tia. Glover has said that he is still unsure whether he wants to be cast as a part of The Family Man Cast, but he certainly looks like a good fit for the part. He may have a chance to play a father and grandfather-type character, but it is possible that he will be seen as an ex-cop who has taken on a new role, possibly a police officer.
In order to make his character look like a possible father figure, The Family Man Cast gave Tia a very strong background. She was a high school teacher who was also married and had three children. In her spare time she spent with her daughter, played by Tea Leoni, and her son, played by Michael Gambon. Tia is shown to be more supportive than her own mother, who disapproved of her relationship with Danny.
Nic Cage also didn't get the role of a father, but he does have some fun moments. His character is played by Robert Downey Jr., and he appears in a few scenes throughout the movie. At one point, Cage plays the role of a father trying to raise his children while the movie's real father is away, played by Billy Crystal. He has his daughter leave the house to go shop and he is left alone with his son while the two are in the mall. When the family returns home, they find him shopping for things with his dad and his daughter.
Nic Cage plays the role of a character whose father is more supportive than his own father is. This makes the character's relationship with his daughter interesting. In one scene, Cage's character and his wife are discussing how she is getting old while his father is out with his work. Cage's character says, "She's got the legs of a horse, she's a horse. Who cares?"
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kim26chiu · 7 years
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Universities Must Reinvent Themselves
Foellinger Auditorium at the University of Illinois
Jon Marcus has a lengthy feature in the Washington Monthly that is in effect a plea for more government funding for universities, especially research, with a focus on Midwest institutions.
But university research is in trouble, and so is an economy more dependent on it than many people understand. Federal funding for basic research—more than half of it conducted on university campuses like this one—has effectively declined since 2008, failing to keep pace with inflation. This is before taking into account Trump administration proposals to slash the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) budgets by billions of dollars more.
Trump’s cuts would affect all research universities, but not equally. The problem is more pronounced at public universities than private ones, and especially at public institutions in the Midwest, which have historically conducted some of the nation’s most important research. These schools are desperately needed to diversify economies that rely disproportionately on manufacturing and agriculture and lack the wealthy private institutions that fuel the knowledge industries found in Silicon Valley or along Boston’s 128/I-95 corridor. Yet many flagship Midwestern research universities are being weakened by deep state budget cuts. Threats to pensions (in Illinois) and tenure (in Wisconsin) portend an exodus of faculty and their all-important research funding, and have already resulted in a frenzy of poaching by better-funded and higher-paying private institutions, industry, and international competitors.
Marcus argues that elite private universities both already get more research dollars and have gigantic endowments that will put them at an advantage in an era of diminished state and federal support, positioning the Midwestern state schools as relative losers in the future.
He gets at a real problem. I agree with him on the need for increased STEM funding, the criticality of Midwest universities to their states’ economic futures, and the fact that they are under threat.  But unfortunately he misses a lot of very important, and more important, points.
1. The “Superstar Effect.” I’ve been doing a series on how many domains are becoming increasingly subject to superstar economics in which the very top of the pyramid is pulling away from the rest. We see this in everything from venture capital to tennis.
Marcus brackets Harvard, MIT, and Stanford with Iowa, Illinois, Ohio State, and Wisconsin. But these are not comparable institutions. The former are superstars, the latter are very good but definitely in a lower league.
I note in a forthcoming article in City Journal:
The heartland suffers because of the “superstar” effect. In today’s world, the spoils often go to the very top of the hierarchy. The heartland is too often good, even very good, but not the best. An exception that proves the rule is Carnegie Mellon University’s computer-science department, which attracted companies like Uber and Google to set up shop in Pittsburgh. The heartland needs to develop more such leading departments in its universities and attract some top talent. To do this, changes in cultural attitudes will be critical.
This problem has a money dimension, but it’s not primarily a money problem. (Culture plays a large role in keeping these institutions from rising to the top as well, something I can’t go into right now). The imbalance of funds is as much an effect as a cause. Pouring more federal funds into the current system might in fact fuel greater divergence, not less. And there’s the simple math problem that there can by definition only be a handful of elite programs in any specialty.
2. The state-university divorce is mutual.  Marcus brings up the Morrill Act and land-grant universities. Part of the goal of that was to educate the residents of these states in the agricultural and industrial arts. But state universities today increasingly are not interested in educating their own small-town farm boys and the like. They are looking to attract the best students from around the country and the world. This both increases their reputation, and brings in much greater revenue because of the vastly higher tuition paid by out of state students.
Foreign students from places like China are now aggressively recruited to universities like Illinois, in part because they are paying very high rack rates with cash. Indiana University, my alma mater, was largely populated with working and middle class Hoosiers and some Chicago suburbanites when I went there. Today it has a much more upscale vibe and has become a destination for East Coast kids who can’t get into the Ivies. (“From Bloomingdale’s to Bloomington” as the Journal once quipped).
Similarly, there’s a conflict in institutional interest between state government and flagship universities when it comes to the destinations of graduates. States want graduates to stay local. Marcus touts this as one of the university’s benefits:
More than one in five graduate students who worked on sponsored research at eight Big Ten universities studied by Ohio State economist Bruce Weinberg, including Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Purdue, and Ohio State, stayed in the state where they attended school—13 percent of them within 50 miles of the campus. That may not sound like a lot—and, indeed, the exodus of highly educated people is a serious problem—but it’s significant when considering that the jobs for these students exist in a national labor market. People with engineering Ph.D.s from Minnesota could take their talents anywhere. If even 20 percent stick around, that’s a big win for states that can’t expect an influx of educated elites from other parts of the country. These graduates provide an educated workforce that employers need, create jobs themselves by starting their own businesses, and pay taxes.
But there’s a name for a school whose graduates predominantly stay local: community college. If a large percentage of students are staying in local second tier economic markets, that’s not necessarily a good thing for the institution’s standing. For example, in some fields, schools are ranked in part by the average salary of graduates, something that benefits schools that send grads to the most elite markets. To become superstars, their level of talent export would need to increase, not decrease.
This is a structural conflict. In a superstar world, universities are facing pressure from the market to try to move upwards toward MIT and Harvard. But states give them money in part to carry out a local mission of educating the state’s children and producing talent for the local market, activities that tend not to promote elite status.
To the extent that state universities want to cater to foreign students, rich East Coast kids, and elite market employers, state governments are right to question whether their funding levels make sense. The Michigan model (mostly private and less public money at an institution that is trying to be elite) or outright conversion into a private school (trading public funds for freedom to pursue elite status) might actually be a painful but realistic solution for some schools. (Note that Ivy League Cornell was a rare private land grand college).
3. Conflation of “universities” with STEM research. The article opens with a description of biomedical research in progress at Ohio State University. But the reality is that the STEM research that leads to spinoff businesses is a small part of what universities do. A lot of schools have seen rapidly rising tuition as they’ve splurged on luxury facilities to attract students. Universities have also seen vast expansions of their administrative staff, who are often very well paid. Many university departments don’t do research at all in terms that the average person would understand it. Significant tracts of the humanities, social sciences, and cultural studies fields are basically political activism in academic garb.
These would all be areas that could be cut without affecting a university’s ability to spin off the next high tech startup or cure a disease. They might all be good things to do, but they aren’t entitled to funding on the basis of a STEM research halo.
In short, the university needs to be seen in part as a disaggregated set of entities and activities, of which hard STEM fields are only one. Universities themselves are making some of their own choices to fund things other than STEM research.
4. Universities need to be reinvented for the 21st century. Marcus’ article doesn’t mention any reform of universities, merely talks about the threat represented by decreased funding. But in light of all of the above, plus many more things such as the potential for technology to revolutionize teaching, one would think there’s be more focus on how these institutions should be reinventing themselves.
He could have, for example, interviewed Purdue University president Mitch Daniels, who somehow managed to get a handle on costs and has frozen tuition since his arrival. He’s also making forays into online learning and even setting up a high school in Indianapolis to try to better prepare minority students to qualify for admission. Some of his ideas might work, others might not. But reinvention needs to be on the table.
The truth is that from a teaching perspective, it’s not clear at all the value that universities provide. The biggest function they serve is credentialing. The value of your education in the marketplace is really the value of the brand of the institution you attended, especially in an era of grade inflation. As one of my buddies noted, “The hardest part about Harvard is getting in.”
As Naval Ravikant of AngelList put it in a tweetstorm:
If the primary purpose of school was education, the Internet should obsolete it. But school is mainly about credentialing. Schools survive anti-educational thinking (e.g., groupthink) due to symbiosis between institutions that issue and accept credentials. Employers looking past traditional credentials can arbitrage the gap. The more meritocracy an industry, the faster it moves past false credentialing, i.e., the MBA and tech startups. A generation of autodidacts, educated by the Internet and leveraged by technology, will eventually starve the industrial-education system.
Naval is known for provocative predictions, and admits this won’t happen soon. Who knows if it ever will. The key point is that the legacy university business model is not guaranteed to last forever, any more than anyone else’s legacy model is. The landscape in which our universities operate is changing around them. While I am on board with Marcus with spending more on STEM research, there are a lot bigger problems than government money and threats to tenure in Wisconsin bearing down on the Midwest public university.
  from Aaron M. Renn http://www.urbanophile.com/2017/10/17/universities-must-reinvent-themselves/
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barb31clem · 7 years
Text
Universities Must Reinvent Themselves
Foellinger Auditorium at the University of Illinois
Jon Marcus has a lengthy feature in the Washington Monthly that is in effect a plea for more government funding for universities, especially research, with a focus on Midwest institutions.
But university research is in trouble, and so is an economy more dependent on it than many people understand. Federal funding for basic research—more than half of it conducted on university campuses like this one—has effectively declined since 2008, failing to keep pace with inflation. This is before taking into account Trump administration proposals to slash the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) budgets by billions of dollars more.
Trump’s cuts would affect all research universities, but not equally. The problem is more pronounced at public universities than private ones, and especially at public institutions in the Midwest, which have historically conducted some of the nation’s most important research. These schools are desperately needed to diversify economies that rely disproportionately on manufacturing and agriculture and lack the wealthy private institutions that fuel the knowledge industries found in Silicon Valley or along Boston’s 128/I-95 corridor. Yet many flagship Midwestern research universities are being weakened by deep state budget cuts. Threats to pensions (in Illinois) and tenure (in Wisconsin) portend an exodus of faculty and their all-important research funding, and have already resulted in a frenzy of poaching by better-funded and higher-paying private institutions, industry, and international competitors.
Marcus argues that elite private universities both already get more research dollars and have gigantic endowments that will put them at an advantage in an era of diminished state and federal support, positioning the Midwestern state schools as relative losers in the future.
He gets at a real problem. I agree with him on the need for increased STEM funding, the criticality of Midwest universities to their states’ economic futures, and the fact that they are under threat.  But unfortunately he misses a lot of very important, and more important, points.
1. The “Superstar Effect.” I’ve been doing a series on how many domains are becoming increasingly subject to superstar economics in which the very top of the pyramid is pulling away from the rest. We see this in everything from venture capital to tennis.
Marcus brackets Harvard, MIT, and Stanford with Iowa, Illinois, Ohio State, and Wisconsin. But these are not comparable institutions. The former are superstars, the latter are very good but definitely in a lower league.
I note in a forthcoming article in City Journal:
The heartland suffers because of the “superstar” effect. In today’s world, the spoils often go to the very top of the hierarchy. The heartland is too often good, even very good, but not the best. An exception that proves the rule is Carnegie Mellon University’s computer-science department, which attracted companies like Uber and Google to set up shop in Pittsburgh. The heartland needs to develop more such leading departments in its universities and attract some top talent. To do this, changes in cultural attitudes will be critical.
This problem has a money dimension, but it’s not primarily a money problem. (Culture plays a large role in keeping these institutions from rising to the top as well, something I can’t go into right now). The imbalance of funds is as much an effect as a cause. Pouring more federal funds into the current system might in fact fuel greater divergence, not less. And there’s the simple math problem that there can by definition only be a handful of elite programs in any specialty.
2. The state-university divorce is mutual.  Marcus brings up the Morrill Act and land-grant universities. Part of the goal of that was to educate the residents of these states in the agricultural and industrial arts. But state universities today increasingly are not interested in educating their own small-town farm boys and the like. They are looking to attract the best students from around the country and the world. This both increases their reputation, and brings in much greater revenue because of the vastly higher tuition paid by out of state students.
Foreign students from places like China are now aggressively recruited to universities like Illinois, in part because they are paying very high rack rates with cash. Indiana University, my alma mater, was largely populated with working and middle class Hoosiers and some Chicago suburbanites when I went there. Today it has a much more upscale vibe and has become a destination for East Coast kids who can’t get into the Ivies. (“From Bloomingdale’s to Bloomington” as the Journal once quipped).
Similarly, there’s a conflict in institutional interest between state government and flagship universities when it comes to the destinations of graduates. States want graduates to stay local. Marcus touts this as one of the university’s benefits:
More than one in five graduate students who worked on sponsored research at eight Big Ten universities studied by Ohio State economist Bruce Weinberg, including Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Purdue, and Ohio State, stayed in the state where they attended school—13 percent of them within 50 miles of the campus. That may not sound like a lot—and, indeed, the exodus of highly educated people is a serious problem—but it’s significant when considering that the jobs for these students exist in a national labor market. People with engineering Ph.D.s from Minnesota could take their talents anywhere. If even 20 percent stick around, that’s a big win for states that can’t expect an influx of educated elites from other parts of the country. These graduates provide an educated workforce that employers need, create jobs themselves by starting their own businesses, and pay taxes.
But there’s a name for a school whose graduates predominantly stay local: community college. If a large percentage of students are staying in local second tier economic markets, that’s not necessarily a good thing for the institution’s standing. For example, in some fields, schools are ranked in part by the average salary of graduates, something that benefits schools that send grads to the most elite markets. To become superstars, their level of talent export would need to increase, not decrease.
This is a structural conflict. In a superstar world, universities are facing pressure from the market to try to move upwards toward MIT and Harvard. But states give them money in part to carry out a local mission of educating the state’s children and producing talent for the local market, activities that tend not to promote elite status.
To the extent that state universities want to cater to foreign students, rich East Coast kids, and elite market employers, state governments are right to question whether their funding levels make sense. The Michigan model (mostly private and less public money at an institution that is trying to be elite) or outright conversion into a private school (trading public funds for freedom to pursue elite status) might actually be a painful but realistic solution for some schools. (Note that Ivy League Cornell was a rare private land grand college).
3. Conflation of “universities” with STEM research. The article opens with a description of biomedical research in progress at Ohio State University. But the reality is that the STEM research that leads to spinoff businesses is a small part of what universities do. A lot of schools have seen rapidly rising tuition as they’ve splurged on luxury facilities to attract students. Universities have also seen vast expansions of their administrative staff, who are often very well paid. Many university departments don’t do research at all in terms that the average person would understand it. Significant tracts of the humanities, social sciences, and cultural studies fields are basically political activism in academic garb.
These would all be areas that could be cut without affecting a university’s ability to spin off the next high tech startup or cure a disease. They might all be good things to do, but they aren’t entitled to funding on the basis of a STEM research halo.
In short, the university needs to be seen in part as a disaggregated set of entities and activities, of which hard STEM fields are only one. Universities themselves are making some of their own choices to fund things other than STEM research.
4. Universities need to be reinvented for the 21st century. Marcus’ article doesn’t mention any reform of universities, merely talks about the threat represented by decreased funding. But in light of all of the above, plus many more things such as the potential for technology to revolutionize teaching, one would think there’s be more focus on how these institutions should be reinventing themselves.
He could have, for example, interviewed Purdue University president Mitch Daniels, who somehow managed to get a handle on costs and has frozen tuition since his arrival. He’s also making forays into online learning and even setting up a high school in Indianapolis to try to better prepare minority students to qualify for admission. Some of his ideas might work, others might not. But reinvention needs to be on the table.
The truth is that from a teaching perspective, it’s not clear at all the value that universities provide. The biggest function they serve is credentialing. The value of your education in the marketplace is really the value of the brand of the institution you attended, especially in an era of grade inflation. As one of my buddies noted, “The hardest part about Harvard is getting in.”
As Naval Ravikant of AngelList put it in a tweetstorm:
If the primary purpose of school was education, the Internet should obsolete it. But school is mainly about credentialing. Schools survive anti-educational thinking (e.g., groupthink) due to symbiosis between institutions that issue and accept credentials. Employers looking past traditional credentials can arbitrage the gap. The more meritocracy an industry, the faster it moves past false credentialing, i.e., the MBA and tech startups. A generation of autodidacts, educated by the Internet and leveraged by technology, will eventually starve the industrial-education system.
Naval is known for provocative predictions, and admits this won’t happen soon. Who knows if it ever will. The key point is that the legacy university business model is not guaranteed to last forever, any more than anyone else’s legacy model is. The landscape in which our universities operate is changing around them. While I am on board with Marcus with spending more on STEM research, there are a lot bigger problems than government money and threats to tenure in Wisconsin bearing down on the Midwest public university.
  from Aaron M. Renn http://www.urbanophile.com/2017/10/17/universities-must-reinvent-themselves/
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