The United States’ educational and research pre-eminence is being undermined, and some of the chief underminers are universities themselves, according to articles this week in Science and Nature magazines. Universities are aggressively seeking federal dollars to build bigger and fancier laboratory facilities, and are not paying an equal amount of attention to teaching and nurturing the students who would fill them, scientists say in the articles. "It’s a Ponzi scheme," said Kenneth G. Mann, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Vermont, whose concerns were described by Nature. "Eventually you’ll have a situation where you’re not even producing the feedstock into the system."

Read full article [here].
by Paul Basken, The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Posted: January 13th, 2011, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.