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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   22046 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 19, 2025

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The NYT wants you to know that Harvard has "no way out." I'm sure Harvard University with its 53.2 billion dollar endowment is going to start having trouble attracting researchers:

Trump has stripped extensive federal funding from Harvard. Let’s say a judge gives back all of that money for this year. Half of the university’s research budget comes from the federal government. Where is Harvard going to get the money in the year after that, and the year after that? If you’re a researcher, do you want to be doing research at a school where your funding is in question?

I suspect they're scaring their readership to rack in the clicks. The article is being embraced by Rightist influencer people eager for confirmation of their "victory." They're COOKED! Back in reality, the Democrats will likely take back the Presidency in 2028, if not then then very likely by 2032. It will eventually dawn on these people that Harvard remains massively prestigious while nobody knows or cares about Fred's Car Wash in Des Moines Iowa.

Now, I hate the NYT as much as anyone, but the first paragraph after your no way out quote says:

The Trump administration’s attempt to block international students from attending Harvard University was a sharp escalation in the showdown between the federal government and one of the nation’s oldest and most powerful institutions.

This is the real threat, not the squabbling over federal funds. Harvard might swim in cash, but they also live of their ability to draw in the best students from half the world. For billions of people worldwide, the answer to the question "Where would you study if you were super-smart and wanted to win a Nobel?" is "Ivy league, or a few prestigious state-run universities in the US". In the future, the answer for all but 340M (plus Canadians, perhaps?) will change to "... except Harvard, which does not take international students."

My understanding of the US private universities is that their students are either very rich and smart or brilliant and on a stipend. It is a symbiotic relationship: the rich student pays for both of them getting a prestigious, excellent education, and the brilliant student makes sure that the prestige of the university is maintained.

About 27% of Harvard's students are international (a lower number than I would have expected). I think that the "rich and smart" internationals can be replaced without too much trouble, you would not have to lower standards very much to find still very smart Americans willing to pay for the privilege of studying at Harvard. I did not find what fraction of students is studying for free at Harvard, never mind how many of them are internationals, but I suspect that the overall fraction of students on a stipend is small, and that a significant fraction of them are internationals. Replacing these with US nationals will likely hurt.

Also, there are cascading effects. If you are a brilliant young American, would you rather go to a university where you can meet the best minds of your generation (or so they would claim), or one where you can only meet the best US minds of your generation who do not care about that very fact?

The obvious reaction (if the courts uphold Trump's decision) for Harvard would be to announce them opening a branch in Canada, but that is not easily done.

Its the opposite of what your gut instinct was. International students are the "rich and mediocre" type, overwhelmingly. And there is a surplus of brilliant, nonrich, Americans, not just for Harvard, but for the Ivy League.

In my experience, the typical elite undergraduate student is a capable smartish rule follower, regardless of if they're international or domestic. Dirt poor internationals don't ever make it to elite schools, and dirt poor domestics rarely do. The dirt poor domestics aren't particularly brilliant.

The occasions where someone is brilliant are rare, and they tend to be children of middle class professionals, regardless of if they're international or domestic. They do attend at higher rates than typical universities.

Technical PhDs are always smart. Masters students are universally idiots.

Do you know if the undergrads are any better? My primary experiences have been with international ms (the worst) and PhD (who seem average to slightly above average) students.

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