UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

[*T*]

Re: UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

Universities tell Gordon Brown: cuts will bring us to our knees

Top universities accuse Gordon Brown of jeopardising 800 years of higher education, warning that they could quickly be "brought to their knees" by the government's spending cuts of up to £2.5bn, thereby damaging Britain's ability to recover from recession.

In a withering attack, the leaders of the Russell Group of 20 leading universities say: "It has taken more than 800 years to create one of the world's greatest education systems, and it looks like it will take just six months to bring it to its knees."

[Rajiv]

Re: UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

It seems that Mega doesn't want universities to be funded! I guess university education is an "Upper Class Thing"

[*T*]

Re: UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

It seems that Mega doesn't want universities to be funded! I guess university education is an "Upper Class Thing"

The thing that is suffering is not just undergrad education, but research in expensive practical disciplines like chemistry or aeronautics. We can't compete on price with China, we can (like Germany) compete on quality and technology. But not if we spunk away our lead like this.
R&D is rarely done in industry with a horizon of more than 5 years. Otherwise it is too speculative. They farm it out to universities.

[Rajiv]

Re: UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

I well agree with you -- but that may not be how the "hoi polloi" view it. This may well be viewed as an avocation of the "hoi oligoi"

[Mega]

Re: UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

"T"
Let me make this clear & understood:-

FU*K THEM!

If those fuc*ers want funding than i say go to industy & get it there!

Got it?
Good.
Mike

[Rajiv]

Re: UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

*T*

You have to realize that "ALL" of the financial instruments -- derivatives were cooked up by academics and not by people in the banking industry -- academics went to the banking industry and sold those ideas to them. So academic research may well be viewed by many as causing the current collapse.

Bernanke became the Fed Chair on the basis of his academic research on the Great Depression, and he claimed that "He could have avoided the Depression had he been in charge then." It appears that his ideas may also well fail.

So mainstream academics may not be viewed in good repute today!

[BiscayneSunrise]

Re: UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

That's good. For a moment there I thought perhaps something important was being lost.

Besides, who needs libraries. Everything worth knowing is now on the internet...

Exactly. Despite much of the gloom, there are occasional glimmers of light when we see the future peeking through the clouds. Dusty Victorian era libraries, as magnificent as they may be, are the past. Knowledge that is digital and instantly available to everyone is the best kind of knowledge. Give me a server farm over the British Museum any day.

[Rajiv]

Re: UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

I agree -- Without the internet, I would not have been able to accomplish what I have done. What took me two years of research, would likely have taken me twenty -- which means that I would likely have lost interest and not pursued it.

But that said, digitizing existing sources of information and maintaining the server farms and the internet infrastructure is not cheap either! Often there are great nuggets of wisdom embedded in some very old texts -- which may or may not have been digitized yet!

[*T*]

Re: UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

"T"
Let me make this clear & understood:-

FU*K THEM!

If those fuc*ers want funding than i say go to industy & get it there!

Got it?
Good.
Mike

I understood you the first time Mega. We do normally get some of our funding from industry. But, industry have no money now. So you are effectively saying, let UK research shut up shop. We will lose what little edge we have.

[*T*]

Re: UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

*T*

You have to realize that "ALL" of the financial instruments -- derivatives were cooked up by academics and not by people in the banking industry -- academics went to the banking industry and sold those ideas to them. So academic research may well be viewed by many as causing the current collapse.

One hell of a stretch. I don't think I've met anyone who has made that connection before. Certainly I don't think it's a popular view.

Bernanke became the Fed Chair on the basis of his academic research on the Great Depression, and he claimed that "He could have avoided the Depression had he been in charge then." It appears that his ideas may also well fail.

Again there's a difference between pseudo-science like Economics and actual sciences and again engineering. To judge academia on the the basis of Bernanke is like judging hairdressers on the basis of Sweeney Todd.

[Rajiv]

Re: UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

*T*

I am not disagreeing with you on the funding to R&D -- In my view government funding of R&D is very important. However, when failures happen, then many innocent bystanders are also tarred by the same brush.

As regards my statement on derivatives, it is my understanding based on the LTCM case that indeed it was the case that the academics - in this case Myron Scholes was the kngpin. Hedge Fund strategies that led to the toxic derivatives all based themselves on strategies very similar to those developed by LTCM -- and this led to the wholesale hiring of mathematically competent academics by the hedge fund and banking industry.

Most of the strategies by these players were very similar and involved a very high degree of leveraging. This led to the exponential growth of the nominal value of the derivatives. This also caused the sytemic stresses that ultimately caused the collapse of the system. Much of this was based on faulty assumptions both in how the risks were viewed, and also a primary assumption that any trade made by the fund were small enough that they would have no systemic effect. Both of these assumptions were in fact proven false. The LTCM fiasco almost brought down the system -- but for the FED sponsored bailout. The LTCM bailout was the begining of "too big to fail" -- this led to a "Jevons Paradox" type situation. Paradoxically, this reduced the risk of LTCM type strategies in the view of the market participants. In their minds, there was some assurance of protection from downside risk. Further the events faced by LTCM were viewed as outliers, and once in a thousand years events, and therefore unlikely to happen again -- a basic misunderstanding of statistical outcomes.

So even though I was to some extent utilizing a bit of hyperbole, there were large elements of truth in my statements.

The LTCM fiasco is a very good case study, and a harbinger of what was to come.

[Techdread]

Re: UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

"T"
Let me make this clear & understood:-

FU*K THEM!

If those fuc*ers want funding than i say go to industy & get it there!

Got it?
Good.
Mike

Its not up to you take a chill pill.

[*T*]

Re: UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

*T*

I am not disagreeing with you on the funding to R&D -- In my view government funding of R&D is very important. However, when failures happen, then many innocent bystanders are also tarred by the same brush.

As regards my statement on derivatives, it is my understanding based on the LTCM case that indeed it was the case that the academics - in this case Myron Scholes was the kngpin. Hedge Fund strategies that led to the toxic derivatives all based themselves on strategies very similar to those developed by LTCM -- and this led to the wholesale hiring of mathematically competent academics by the hedge fund and banking industry.

Most of the strategies by these players were very similar and involved a very high degree of leveraging. This led to the exponential growth of the nominal value of the derivatives. This also caused the sytemic stresses that ultimately caused the collapse of the system. Much of this was based on faulty assumptions both in how the risks were viewed, and also a primary assumption that any trade made by the fund were small enough that they would have no systemic effect. Both of these assumptions were in fact proven false. The LTCM fiasco almost brought down the system -- but for the FED sponsored bailout. The LTCM bailout was the begining of "too big to fail" -- this led to a "Jevons Paradox" type situation. Paradoxically, this reduced the risk of LTCM type strategies in the view of the market participants. In their minds, there was some assurance of protection from downside risk. Further the events faced by LTCM were viewed as outliers, and once in a thousand years events, and therefore unlikely to happen again -- a basic misunderstanding of statistical outcomes.

So even though I was to some extent utilizing a bit of hyperbole, there were large elements of truth in my statements.

The LTCM fiasco is a very good case study, and a harbinger of what was to come.

Ultimately though, risk is a management decision. Practitioners are and were well aware of the assumptions these models made and the conditions when they were not valid. Everyone knows correlation -> 1 in a crisis. To water down the caveats is a management decision. The same process happened in the Challenger disaster.

[Mega]

Re: UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

Sorry to get upset "T", but how many great inventions were made in Blighty only to be used else where to NO ben-a-fit to UK PLC?

Microwave cooking?
Magnatic scaning?

The list is endless!

Why in GOD's name should I folk out cash to ben-a-fit an overseas company?

Mike

[big67]

Re: UK research council has defaulted on contractual obligations

Dear *T*, I happen to agree with your analysis. To water down the caveats is definitely a management decision.
Moreover I agree with you in that fundamental research is very seldom driven by industry. Hope UK recover soon.