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this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2026
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Chapotraphouse
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unsurprising. there has been an outward flow for many years. there was an attempt to slow the large exodus to the PRC under Biden by threatening to withhold federal $ from all R1 schools that had a Confucius Institute (a study/research abroad vehicle for graduate students) and they all vanished overnight.
but that did nothing to the structural problem of funding austerity and the neoliberal-managerial university hollowing out, and just a general vibe that everything is reoriented towards serving private interests. i was hearing the worried conversations about the ominous future from well positioned researchers at the height of their careers as far back as 2011.
so, if you want to brain up, unless you want to compete for an increasingly smaller pool of public sector jobs making kinda crap pay and facing uncertainty... or chase VC money by trying to invent a machine that prints money for the already rich... your best option is to get the fuck out and go somewhere people are still actually trying to investigate shit.
As you said, this is a long time in the making. State and Federal funding for universities has been dropping since the 90s and accelerating after 2007. The often talked about toxicity in academia (especially about publishing) is IMO partly just a result of that - it turned into a competition for scarce resources, which ruined a lot of the magic that draws people to PhD programs. Trump's awful shit undoubtedly catalyzed this drop, but MAGA is only a part of the story.
The burnout culture of academia has to be a big contributor.
soooooooooo fucking stupid. The trend in science for the last like 50 years has been towards international cooperation. Obviously allowing an institution to collaborate with others results in more research output, funding, prestige, etc.
Biden: Slams dick in car door
libs: the perfidious chinese will never see this coming