University hiring freezes

[MaynardFriedman]

Beginning yesterday, a flurry of universities announced sweeping hiring freezes and freezes on spending on building renovations. Unsurprisingly, hiring freezes at Penn, Harvard and MIT received the most fanfare but Pitt, University of Washington, Emory, Johns Hopkins and the University of Vermont made similar announcements. The trigger for the spate of announcements is pretty clear: the Trump administration freezing all grant money to Columbia and announcing investigations of 60 universities for anti-Semitism caused administrators to panic, given freezes on NSF money and NIH money. I presume that PhD admissions may be affected as well at many schools.

There is no reason to think hiring freezes will be confined to the above schools. And there is ample reason to think they will influence hiring and spending decisions in universities throughout the country, out of an abundance of caution, as the cutoff of federal money would put most research universities in dire financial situation.

Collectively, the higher education is a sprawling sector, so sweeping hiring freezes are arguably at least as important as the tech hiring freezes of 2022 and 2023. Unfortunately, it sounds like layoffs will happen, particularly at schools with a lot of biomedical research.

I am too lazy to post links but I figured this deserves a thread, as it is a very consequential story. My own brief editorial: those on the forum who seek retribution against Palestinian protestors will find that retribution will be shared widely, by anyone in the academic sector, which of course disproportionately employs people who are Jewish and quite a few Israelis as well. Congratulations on your big defeat of "antisemitism"!

[ponderosa peen 🌲]

With DGE's attacks on federal funding for research and proposed changes to overhead administration, universities have already been signaling they were doing this for a month.

If you believe this has anything to do with "fighting antisemitism" you are a huge, huge rube.

[MaynardFriedman]

With DGE's attacks on federal funding for research and proposed changes to overhead administration, universities have already been signaling they were doing this for a month.

If you believe this has anything to do with "fighting antisemitism" you are a huge, huge rube.

Yea but they are all announcing this now because the Columbia cuts happened. Imagine being an administrator and there's an imminent threat hanging over you like that - you're going to react instantly. Doing anything else could result in being forced to make demoralizing announcements about layoffs.

I think this antisemitism investigation is just a smokescreen, of course. This is the best way to rationalize further cuts while maximizing favorable news coverage. And they will placate some important donors this way. I imagine there will be a relentless war.

[Banana Republican]

And meanwhile, leading researchers and scientists are being welcomed with open arms in China. And increasingly, if the USA becomes hostile to science and cutting edge research, other researchers will flee to Europe (and to Canada!)

China and Europe, then, will lead the world with the next round of pathbreaking scientific innovations, which will benefit those other countries first as they take a competitive lead over the declining United States.


Brain Gain: Chinese Experts Return Home to Drive National Technological Ambition Amidst US Tech Competition

After more than a decade in the United States, Chinese nuclear physicist Liu Chang, whose research has been crucial in the journey to achieve fusion energy, has left Princeton University for a position at Peking University in Beijing, thereby joining the growing list of highly skilled chinese returning to their homeland, in a wave of Brain Gain. Last month, Liu joined the Institute of Heavy Ion Physics at Peking University’s School of Physics as an assistant professor. The Plasma specialist will pursue magnetic confinement on mission to make nuclear fusion a reality.

...

The “brain gain,” Driven by a confluence of factors, including national pride, research opportunities, and a deep-seated desire to contribute to China’s technological self-reliance, cover diverse disciplines from nuclear physics to artificial intelligence and semiconductor technology. It signals a national movement amidst the escalating technological competition between China and the United States. In related development. Artificial intelligence expert Tingwen Huang, a highly cited researcher who spent over two decades of experience at Texas A&M University in Qatar, has returned to China to become a chair professor at Shenzhen University of Advanced Technology. Huang joined the University in late 2024 in its computer science and control engineering school, according to his faculty profile on the university’s website.

...

The return of these highly skilled individuals reflects a broader and deliberate national strategy to attract and retain top talent. China’s substantial investment in research and development, coupled with its commitment to creating a supportive environment for innovation, is proving to be a powerful and effective draw for scientists and researchers. The nation’s ability to provide access to cutting-edge research opportunities, coupled with a palpable sense of national purpose and a desire to contribute to the nation’s rise, is attracting these experts home. This significant influx of talent is poised to accelerate China’s technological advancement and strengthen its position in the global tech landscape.

[Joseph Cao]

Grimly poetic that Nazism drove the biggest scientific influx into this country and a Nazi-saluting boor is in the process of driving it out.

[jojoju1998]

And that's why Elon Musk is a effing idiot.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Don't these universities have absolutely massive endowments?  What is the purpose of those?  My university has been begging me to donate to their endowment for a decade now and I'm just like, for what?  I go back to visit and the CompSci building is still a smelly brutalist linoleum hovel that hasn't been updated since the 70s.  What are you spending this money on?  Tuition is higher than ever and you want me to donate to your endowment fund just so you can tell USNWR you have a fat piggy bank and leapfrog ahead of Johns Hopkins in the rankings?

[Averroës]

It's interesting that many of the schools named here are highly selective and in possession of huge endowments, but that's not the case for all of them.

Eds and Meds has been a lifeline for large swathes of the country over the past couple of generations, especially places that otherwise would be totally left behind by economic changes. They've been particularly important in terms of sparing degreed, professional class people from the worst of it.

Hard times ahead for institutions that have optimized for winning federal dollars.

[kwabbit]

Don't these universities have absolutely massive endowments?  What is the purpose of those?  My university has been begging me to donate to their endowment for a decade now and I'm just like, for what?  I go back to visit and the CompSci building is still a smelly brutalist linoleum hovel that hasn't been updated since the 70s.  What are you spending this money on?  Tuition is higher than ever and you want me to donate to your endowment fund just so you can tell USNWR you have a fat piggy bank and leapfrog ahead of Johns Hopkins in the rankings?

Most of the endowment is illiquid, but they do use revenue generated by the endowment to lower tuition expenses and to maintain buildings. Moreover, most of the endowment is also targeted and can only be used for what the donor specified. Sometimes that's a building, sometimes those are scholarships, etc. The main use of the endowment is as collateral to get cheap debt when the university does need liquid cash.

The very wealthy operate in the same way. If Mark Zuckerberg needs $10 billion in cash, he's not selling Meta stocks. He's offering Meta stocks as collateral to get a low rate loan for $10 billion.

[Sestak]

Don't these universities have absolutely massive endowments?  What is the purpose of those?  My university has been begging me to donate to their endowment for a decade now and I'm just like, for what?  I go back to visit and the CompSci building is still a smelly brutalist linoleum hovel that hasn't been updated since the 70s.  What are you spending this money on?  Tuition is higher than ever and you want me to donate to your endowment fund just so you can tell USNWR you have a fat piggy bank and leapfrog ahead of Johns Hopkins in the rankings?

Endowment funds generally don’t go to research usually because donors won’t earmark for it; the donors want their money to go to flashy stuff and it’s generally a universal expectation - no matter what university it is - that researchers are supposed to find their own grants/funding.