Harvard University’s endowment is $35 billion, and some people aren’t happy about it. Massachusetts legislators see money that could be theirs, and are contemplating new taxes. Social activists see money that could be going to charity, and want to divert it. Distinguished alumni who have landed at public universities wonder why, with all that cash, Harvard graduates such a tiny number of students.
These are all legitimate concerns, and I won’t be suggesting the ideal policy compromise. But there is one misimpression that people seem to have, that might as well be corrected before any hasty actions are taken: the purpose of Harvard is not to educate students. If anything, its primary purpose is to produce research and scholarly work. Nobody should be surprised that the gigantic endowment isn’t put to use in providing top-flight educational experiences for a much larger pool of students; it could be, for sure, but that’s not the goal. The...
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Catastrophic illnesses are claimed to have triggered approximately half of all personal bankruptcies in the United States. According to recent findings from a Harvard University study, most people who go bankrupt because of medical problems also have health insurance. Researchers found that many private insurance plans that offer limited catastrophic coverage were inadequate and offer little financial security for less severe illnesses.
Questionnaires were distributed to 1,771 bankruptcy fi... more
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Edited and translated by Maurice A. Finocchiaro, an international authority on Galileo, this collection makes available to scholars and students an excellent and extensive selection of Galileo’s key works from his early career to the end of his life - some in toto and some represented by key selections. It presents not only Galileo’s most famous works but also a range of less-known texts as well as an excellent selection of the documents from the trial of 1... more
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Charming From: cosmicvariance.com Post Date: 2008-05-30 09:19:10
Via Swans on Tea , a great article about Richard Feynman’s days in the 1980’s working for Thinking Machines on their groundbreaking massively-parallel computers. (Reprinted from Physics Today.)
Richard did a remarkable job of focusing on his “assignment,” stopping only occasionally to help wire the computer room, set up the machine shop, shake hands with the investors, install the telephones, and cheerfully remind us of how crazy we all were. When we finall... more
After Congress slashed the budget for high energy physics just before Christmas last year, well into the 2008 fiscal year, Fermilab had to scramble to figure out how to cope with a huge shortfall in its budget.
The response was twofold. Firstly, all employees would be subject to “ furloughs” in which all salaried employees would take one week off without pay in every two-month period. This has made it hard to get, say, five Fermilab people in a meeting together the past few m... more
Pocket Change From: cosmicvariance.com Post Date: 2008-05-26 15:17:04
I made a chart! This is the kind of thing you do when you return from a long trip and are jet-lagged.
These are the 2008 research budgets for physical sciences , in billions of dollars, for the main funding agencies in the U.S.: the Department of Energy, NASA, and the National Science Foundation. For helpful comparison purposes, I’ve also plotted the $14.9 billion that has been misplaced over the course of our reconstruction efforts in Iraq. Not the cost of the war itself, w... more
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