SLIGHTLY OT for "upstater"

[FAIRTIDES]

Upstater:

You seem to be one of the "go-to" people for this stuff. So....

In another thread a poster alleged that someone in the Big-10 is "very impressed" with the assistance/support Malloy and other CT politicos are giving UCONN in it's attempts to gain AAU entry.

Forgetting, for the time-being, whether any of this(above) is true, just how much does AAU acceptance depend on professional politicians? Where do academicians fit?

Thanks, in advance.

 

[upstater]

Upstater:

You seem to be one of the "go-to" people for this stuff. So....

In another thread a poster alleged that someone in the Big-10 is "very impressed" with the assistance/support Malloy and other CT politicos are giving UCONN in it's attempts to gain AAU entry.

Forgetting, for the time-being, whether any of this(above) is true, just how much does AAU acceptance depend on professional politicians? Where do academicians fit?

Thanks, in advance.

It has absolutely nothing to do with politics. Not at all.

The money Malloy is thinking of giving is mostly about private-public foundations. This is not really related to grants, which is what the AAU is interested in. Look at SUNY-Albany. They took a few billion in seed money to start a world class microchip fabrication research center, and the tech coming out of there has spawned $14 billion of private investment. That's what Malloy is hoping for. He's hoping that state funding for high tech will yield more high tech jobs for the state, and he can only hope that UConn scores the way SUNY-Albany did. New York state is trying the same thing with Binghamton, Buffalo and Stony Brook. Each of them is picking two specialties. In Buffalo, this has to do with Rare Earth Materials (of the kind that make up an iPad or iPhone) and Biotech.

Note: Albany is the big winner in state money, but it's also the only SUNY center that is NOT an AAU member. The other 3 are. The difference is that the other 3 schools bring in a very high amount of research grants, which are awarded through peer-reviewed (i.e. academic) national and federal foundations and private enterprises.

Nebraska was kicked out largely because most of the grants it brought in were a result of pork-barrel allocations for agriculture. The AAU decreed that this money should not count, and so Nebraska's research money collapsed.

Right now with the sequester, the research grant world is in upheaval. It's causing a major dent in the awarding of grants. So, no school is going to jump ahead under the current circumstances.

 

[rich1122]

The sequester is a decrease in the increase, NOT a cutback. Why would anybody whine about that?

 

[upstater]

The sequester is a decrease in the increase, NOT a cutback. Why would anybody whine about that?

I whine about it either way because America falls behind, but to answer your question, you can't assume that all funds are fungible. They are not. Some costs are locked in and rise (i.e. health care costs) so there are cuts elsewhere to make up the difference. If we have a massive natural catastrophe (like Sandy), you don't raise taxes to pay for it. You cut elsewhere. And education and research is where they cut first. $40 billion of the $60 billion in grants given last year came from federal research foundations. The National Institutes are cutting research budgets by about 10%, and this impacts tens of thousands of projects and a hundred thousand researchers.

http://www.statesman.com/news/news/...e-up-to-18-million-for-research-under-/nXZ4G/

 

[jdb50]

Thanks for the info upstater. The whole Storrs tech park concept depends on another water source and the usual Connecticut outcry of "Oh my God you can't possibly do that!" has been heard. About 6 weeks ago on Ray's WTIC morning show a rep from the MDC said that due to all the water saving devices that have been installed in homes and businesses they have plenty of water to supply Storrs and it would not stress their system at all. They probably need the project to maintain revenue. Folks in Farmington area have whined that this will take away from the Farmington River summer flows. The whole reason we have storage systems for water of course is to take from the times of high flows. You can walk across most Eastern Conn rivers in the summer in water shoes and not get your ankles wet. The rivers are all low in the summer but those folks are just doing their NIMBY best to squash progress. The other arguement is transfer of water between water drainage basins. Ever heard of Quabbin or Boston? Hey let's stay small time and continue to fall behind. Have to love Connecticut thinking. I hope the politicians ignore the stick in the mud crowd.

 

[upstater]

It may become increasingly political in the future:

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2013/04/us-lawmaker-proposes-new-criteri-1.html