The rationale behind discrediting Liberal Arts

[MRT144]

Papa, where do the grants come from specifically? I assume there is a grant pool that they are pulled from that comes from various funding sources (Gov, Private Donors, Corporate Donors, Tuition, etc. etc.)

The real fault seems to be that within each grant, money from that grant is put back into this pool. Am I wrong in this understanding? so for a 50k grant 5k gets put back into this general grant fund?

[MRT144]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse

And why arent they equal in value? Why is educating people in one subject more valuable in the perspective of an educational institution? If both are attracting students and money, then they appear equal.

False premise.

In this day and age universities seem more interested in keeping exceptional talent then creating it.

What the **** are you talking about?

I'm talking about the reason educational costs are rising and a large part of it is the increased cost of retaining talent to teach. There was a story on Marketplace about this last night.

Interesting is the fact that many instructors would rather have free time though than make more money even if the average costs of running a 3 semester school year would be less.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by MRT144
Papa, where do the grants come from specifically? I assume there is a grant pool that they are pulled from that comes from various funding sources (Gov, Private Donors, Corporate Donors, Tuition, etc. etc.)

The real fault seems to be that within each grant, money from that grant is put back into this pool. Am I wrong in this understanding? so for a 50k grant 5k gets put back into this general grant fund?

Errr...no.

That would be illegal.

[KrazyHorse]

Grants are given to individual professors and to groups of professors, not to some sort of university-wide fund.

[MRT144]

where does said grant money come from?

[KrazyHorse]

When professors spend money from a grant, it gets back to the university in the following ways:

1) Those with labs or other facilities which take up more than simply the space to house them and their grad students pay a rent to the department for building management and infrastructure.

2) Capital outlays are charged an overhead fee for support and for infrastructure. Some of these charges are directly related to the marginal cost to the university of supporting the equipment (tech support for computers etc). Many of them are not. From the university's standpoint they're free money.

3) Graduate students paid out of research budgets have their tuitions paid by the professor (35k per year at Hopkins) as well as their stipends. Again, much of this is free money to the university. Graduate students do not take many classes, use facilities already being paid for by their professors etc.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by MRT144
where does said grant money come from?

NSF, NASA, DoE, DoD,...

[KrazyHorse]

Oh, and private funding of course...

[MRT144]

so the subsidization comes from shared use of products purchased with grant money? is that what subsidize really means?

[KrazyHorse]

Each professor in the physics department also gets some start-up funding from the department itself. Not from the university out of tuition

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by MRT144
so the subsidization comes from shared use of products purchased with grant money? is that what subsidize really means?

Errr...yes. It's a form of subsidisation. Whenever one party bears part or all of the cost of another's consumption then the first party is said to be subsidising the other party.

If you live with somebody and you pay for 75% of the electricity bill even though you're both equal users then you're subsidising them. Duh.

[MRT144]

If you have time can you site as many specific examples where liberal arts programs have been subsidized by products purchased through grant money?

and if you have more time could you tell me what is implicitly wrong with this form of sharing?

[KrazyHorse]

Also,

3) Graduate students paid out of research budgets have their tuitions paid by the professor (35k per year at Hopkins) as well as their stipends. Again, much of this is free money to the university. Graduate students do not take many classes, use facilities already being paid for by their professors etc.

This is less obvious, but is another major source of susidisation. Graduate students being paid out of research budgets provide a net benefit to the university in tuition revenue - tuition costs

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by MRT144
If you have time can you site as many specific examples where liberal arts programs have been subsidized by products purchased through grant money?

Grant money charged as overhead does not directly purchase anything by itself. It gets thrown into the university budget for personnel and infrastructure. You can't trace back and say which dollar bought which paving stone or paid which janitor.

and if you have more time could you tell me what is implicitly wrong with this form of sharing?

Morally wrong? Nothing.

[lord of the mark]

so I take some entrepreneurial university could dismiss all the liberal arts, keep the grant money, and do that much better, right? Free market at work. Yet they dont. They must know something. Perhaps that the best would be science undergrads want to attend a place with liberal arts as well? Biology majors want schools with psych, or anthro. Econ majors want schools that offer poli sci. That liberal arts work brings prestige to universities. etc, etc.

In this case, I see no argument for market failure.