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Are universities run more and more like businesses? What are the consequences?
I watched an episode of "Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj" called "Is College Still Worth It?"
In there the point was made, with ample evidence, that universities are increasingly resembling businesses with dire consequences for the professors. The amount of tenure-track professors is steadily declining while the amount of low-paid, adjunct professors, who are seemingly abused by the institution, is increasing.
I am a graduate student in mathematics and I am getting close to finishing my degree. It was always my dream and intention to go into academia and contribute original research to the fields I am interested in: Differential Geometry and Mathematical Physics.
After watching this episode and witnessing for myself what being in academia is like, I am actually considering other options. Now, my question is, how many other academics have seen and are upset by the way academia is going in terms of being run like a business? How are you handling it? Or do you think it's not really a big deal? Any advice for someone who wants to do pure math research for a living but doesn't want to be tied to a university? Or are my options rather limited?
As brought up in a comment, this show and my experience are referring to US universities but I am interested in hearing anyone's perspective on it. I can imagine similar situations might be faced by academics in other countries.
I would like to emphasize what I see as the important parts of this question. People are mainly addressing the title, which is only part of the story. How are you handling this situation? How is effecting your work/life? Are you okay with this, as a professor/instructor/person in academia?
Here is an article that nicely describes what I am talking about with a good amount of evidence. I am sure there are counter-viewpoints. I am posting this to clarify that I am not talking about universities simply covering their costs: https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/156375

Related: Non academic career options for PhD in Math.

Haven't seen the show, but I suppose it is US specific? Is your question restricted to the US?

The show is definitely US specific and I, personally am in the US. I have pretty limited experience with universities in other parts of the world so I have no idea whether or not they face similar challenges.

@Anyon This question is definitely related but there is an important difference. I am interested strictly in pure math rather than applied math. In our society there must be a place for both. If universities are not going to respect their professors, we might very well lose the only place for pure mathematics research. I.e. research that might not have obvious applications for hundreds of years, if ever.

Watch the next episode or wait for one of us to predict the future - one will probably be right, trick is recognizing which one.

In Australia, universities are run like a business.  The consequence is, when international students disappear, we are screwed.  Another consequence is, we have to accept weak students to make up the budget.  This means we may need to lower education quality to ensure these 'customers' do not fail.  Otherwise, they (or $) walk to another university with a lower standard.  There are many degrees setup to attract students with the sole purpose of shoring up the budget.

Also, a university can be influenced or bought if it is run like a business. E.g., a rich organization or country can give $ to push its agenda, or threaten to remove said $ or students to bend a university to its will.  Academic freedom pretty much goes down the drain.

Can you explain what you mean by "like a business"? Without specifying that, it's hard to know how to answer your question.

@indigochild In my understanding it means a university that just aims at making money, so it focuses on things like pleasing corporations, influential people and groups to get donations, or figuring out how much to increase students expenses to maximize profit, accepting students based more on profit considerations and less on talent, hard work etc., which may result in management decisions very different from the ones of a university that aims at advancing human knowledge, science and technology and profit from such possible advancements. Many people still think of universities as the latter.

Responses will be country dependent - but in the UK I think the answer is yes. The result? Focus on quantity rather than quality with the result being low quality shallow teaching as well as research overall. (Though some people still try to do good work.)

For Germany the answer is probably "less than in the US, more than 50 years ago."

These are some great comments. But actually I am not the one who made the title of my question. Someone edited it. I think that's okay but I do wish we would focus a bit more, not on what the consequences are, but what we should do about it!
And if we are going to focus on the consequences, perhaps the consequences for the professors rather than the students. Consequences for the students are discussed a lot actually. No one really seems to care much about the professors. It seems to me that there are a lot of very high-paid "administrators" for one thing.

Perhaps tag it with "united-states"?

@DetlevCM IME it's only in the past 30 years that UK universities have started taking the general notion of teaching seriously. Before that it was solely up to the student to track down whatever resources they needed to pass the final exam.

Required reading: Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters

@pictorexcrucia: "No one really seems to care much about the professors." But keeping the institution solvent is key to ensuring they get their wages each month. There are lots of questions to be asked about how and why universities are currently run, but if they don't cover their costs they'll go bust: how does that help anyone?

@Lou Knee I completely understand that. But I have yet to see an explanation why a "provost" should make over $500k a year doing... what do provosts even do? while adjunct professors run around between universities without any benefits and very little job security. The problem isn't that the universities are run like a business in the sense that they are covering their costs. The problem is that they are run like a business in the sense that the "owners" seem to be profiting a lot more than the "regular employees" and that doesn't seem even remotely fair.

@pictorexcrucia the university administrators have realized 1) they are answerable to no-one but themselves, and 2) parents do not care about the quality of the education but only about completion of a degree.

@pictorexcrucia Extreme wage differentials also exist in private business and, in the UK, the part-state, part-private health and care sector. I've never seen a believable justification for them, either. Personally, I upvoted Wolfgang's answer below. I'd say one factor is the need to get corporate funding is translated (rightly or wrongly) into a need to appear slick, professional, etc; and another (UK) is that there is a lot more admin, especially around teaching (equality monitoring, access, etc.).

@LouKnee If the resources are available in the library, that would actually be a good thing, as it would teach people how to learn. Universities are not schools.

@LouKnee Education provides a greater good for society. Universities are NOT a business and should never be one. Nor does education automatically equate to higher income. However a well educated population typically provides an overall benefit to society, as a result, society covers the cost. Did you know that some countries pay (yes, pay as in salary) their students? They are expected to be the future elites - and society funds this for the benefit of all.

@henning--reinstateMonica I live in China and just got my Bachelor's degree. AFAIK our intuition is very low thanks to the funding of the government (which is probably why we don't have much academic freedom). However, universities typically don't care a lot about their students (of course I know some great instructors, but students are hardly the top priority of the university), and the overall quality of teaching is not great even in some of the top 30, presumably because they don't depend on our tuition or donation anyway.

@DetlevCM "Universities are not schools." Indeed, when I attended, the correct verb was still to read for a degree. But (UK) universities have had to start taking teaching seriously in response to the expansion in student numbers (Blair's 50%) and an influx of students that hadn't been prepared by schools with no track record of uni admissions, coupled with penalties for students failing to complete. Those constraints come from "society". Society can't have it both ways: if it demands increased participation from disadvantaged groups it has to pay for the cotton wool.

it really depends on the country, here in Switzerland for example, if you're an international student, you're not granted any advantage (even if you pay higher fees than a citizen). If you go to a politechnic and expect to get advantages, you're set for a very big delusion.

I'm not going to answer your career questions, but just the title whether universities are run like businesses:
Over the past 20 years (with longer roots), universities have largely been stripped of the substantial state contributions that have financed operations before then. It used to be the fact that states funded the majority of university expenditures because (i) that provided an education for the young people of the state at a small cost, and (ii) the research done at universities translated into state-of-the-art knowledge in the state that led to highly educated students, start-up companies, companies that want to have offices in the state because they needed that knowledge, etc. In return for these state contributions, universities were run in a manner that had the welfare of the state as its top concern -- which includes a focus on education and research. Both provided great flexibility to faculty as long as they reasonably looked towards the bigger goals.
But states no longer provide that money for a variety of mostly political reasons: For example, my own university now receives less than 10% of its budget from the state of Colorado. This comes with consequences:

We rely on student tuition for much more substantial part of our revenue, and so keeping students happy is an important consideration (whether they deserve it or not).
We rely on out-of-state student tuition to a much larger degree because the out-of-state tuition rate is not subject to political pressure that universities are still subject to despite the fact that the state no longer provides a substantial part of the budget. To attract out-of-state students, they need to be treated like the customers of a business.
We rely on Federal and private research dollars much more than we used to. There is substantially greater pressure on faculty to bring in these research dollars than there used to be.

So when people say "universities are run like businesses today", what they really mean in some sense is that there is greater pressure on paying attention to students ("customers") and to go after research grants than there used to be. One can complain about that all day long, but the reality is that that is in large parts a function of how the income sources of universities have shifted, and what the expectations of those who provide this income are today (students, research funders: wanting to get a good education/research product for their money) in comparison to what they were 20 years ago (states: wanting to benefit the welfare of the state's population). The issue that professors complain about is that the expectations that come with these new sources of revenue are not aligned with what faculty like to do: research and teach.
All of this is not to say that there aren't other issues that also fall under the "operate like a business" category and that are much less driven by external factors. Among these are administrator salaries, for example, and I think that for that there really is no good reason why they should be as high as they are.

Since this is about money, recall both state and private universities may be considered as a non-for profit (and tax free), for example at federal level (IRS 501(c)(3)). Their endowments may be managed by a subsidiary with public financial reports. Harvard University for example (https://finance.harvard.edu/annual-report) benefits from Harvard Management Corporation (http://www.hmc.harvard.edu/) which in turn often acts like a corporation (https://www.wsj.com/articles/harvard-endowment-chief-8-return-is-disappointing-1505847637, https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2020/2/27/hmc-buys-uber/).

Research grants can be a poisoned chalice unfortunately. In the short term they do bring in extra money and prestige, but often the costs of completing the research can be more than the grant is worth.

I like your point that this is partly perception of universities' responses to changes in funding sources. "universities have largely been stripped of the substantial state contributions that have financed operations before then" ... but even those only came in about a century ago. It's always been the case that organisations have had to balance outgoings against income - there's nothing special about universities that stops them going bankrupt, and at least in the UK there have been worries about that stemming from the Covid pandemic.

https://www.colorado.edu/bfp/funding-overview/current-funds-budget
2009/10
Student fees $427.3 million
Fed.  grants $197.3 million
State grants $9.596 million
2019/20
Student fees $895.3 million
Fed.  grants $325.6 million
State grants $4.401 million
At Boulder, in the last 10 years, state grants have gone from a small fraction to a smaller fraction, and are irrelevant to student fees and federal grants. Federal grants have grown, but not as much as tuition. Tuition and fees have doubled in 10 years, while grants have risen about 50%. I think your numbers have problems.

To understand this, you need to look at what "student support" has done. No "business" behaving entity could double their prices in 10 years, still have full classrooms, and also cry poor.

@puppetsock: I really don't want to be goaded into a political discussion here. But I do take objection to you "double their prices in 10 years" statement: The cost of education has actually gone up rather slowly over the last 30 years -- I don't recall the exact number, but it's in the 3-5% range per year. The difference is that the state paid a substantial fraction, and now no longer does. As a consequence, the cost to students has gone up very substantially: They used to pay 1/3 or less of the cost of their education, and now it's 2/3 or more.

This has been going on for a lot longer than 20 years.  College athletics has been a big business since at least the 70's and so has the widespread exploitation of poor minority student athletes for the financial gain of larger universities.  There is nothing "Academic" about this.  It is something that only makes sense for an organization that prioritizes income and profit (ie., a business), it does not make sense for an organization that is supposed to believe in higher principles that are more important than money.

Another exacerbating factor is, the more the university resembles a business, the less money the alumni are willing to donate. My alma mater is reportedly only getting money from a small fraction of all alumni, precisely because it's being run too much like a business.

"But states no longer provide that money for a variety of mostly political reasons" -- do you have any information on what these "mostly political" reasons are? Did anyone say on record what their thought process was for cutting education funding? I'm a bit curious how it came up, since a lot of Americans will end up going to college. Did all the states do this in unison? That strikes me as a bit odd because some states traditionally vote one party, and some vote for the other.

@jrh That's probably only marginally on topic for this forum (and may be better in the chat), but the prevailing narrative in the US over the past 40 years are that (i) taxes are bad, (ii) what services people get for it is not worth the money. So we have bad roads, bad schools, poorly financed universities because taxes are lowered in good times and not raised in economically bad times: rather, services are cut in bad times to balance the budget. We could go into much much more detail, but that would definitely bust the size of these comment boxes.

@WolfgangBangerth if you've got time I'd be interested to hear more of what you've got to say on this (chat's fine if you want to create a room). I've heard about the funding cuts before but I've never seen any references to any specific actions any one state took (or some action that all states took in unison despite different parties being in office, and states having a mix of partisanship). I think you may be right that it's due to tax cuts / recession cycles, but we had recessions before the past 40 years and even going back to the 50s services have always been kinda cyclical.

@jrh Find a channel somewhere and I'll be happy to debate.

@WolfgangBangerth https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/111676/discussion-on-state-support-for-schools

In Sweden, non-government funding of universities is minor — whereas there is pressure to get external research grants, and some tuition fees (but only for students from non-EU countries), these factors haven't had much effect on what sort of courses are offered or what academic criteria are set. There is an ongoing discussion about worry that the general quality is slipping, but that is then rather tied to the students apparently starting university with less knowledge than they used to have. However despite those factors being mostly absent that in the US seems to drive a transformation of universities to operate more like a business, I would say I see also Swedish universities are showing signs of the same. Maybe it's the zeitgeist.
One way in which things have changed concern the basic organisatorial structure. It used to be that not only the universities, but also the individual departments within a university, had a large degree of autonomy: while there was a department head that served as executive, many formal decisions (including, as I recall it, electing the department head) were rather taken in the department board, which was elected by the department staff (in a small enough department, the board would be the department staff). This sort of pattern was then repeated for two more levels, ending at the university as a whole; technically the vice-chancellor was appionted by the government (since most Swedish universitities are formally government agencies), but in practice a local election of vice-chancellor would merely be confirmed by the government.
For the last decade or so however, fashions have changed to rather organise universities in a more businesslike "line organisation", which at least in my eyes looks almost feudal: the department head is vassal to the dean of school and the dean of school is vassal to the vice-chancellor, each tasked with delivering enough students to keep the economy afloat. Some of the internal democratic structures remain, but they have been made rather harmless. It is a striking bit of newspeak that the reform which made this possible was called the "autonomy reform" — it mostly meant that the University Board (comprised mostly of career officials and random professional board members, not accountable to anyone) and vice-chancellor could do whatever they want, without worrying about the faculty that had previously enjoyed practical autonomy. All of course with the best intentions.
Another way in which this trend shows is in the Univerity websites. It used to be (1990's, early 00's) that every department had its own webserver (or shared part of the webserver of a neighbouring department), where the computer-literate professors could publish whatever they liked: research, teaching materials, popular science, etc.  Then (circa 2010) there came a decree that all University webpages had to be served from the common Content Management System, leading to significant migration overhead and loss of content that was too hard to migrate, but all professors could still publish material on the university web. However as of last year, when the university switched CMS, the policy has changed again: only staff employed as Communicators are allowed to publish material, and they generally prefer not to. In particular, the new web policy states that university departments should not on the web publish what sort of research they do, since that counts as "assisting other parties in their monitoring of progress", which is not what the university web is for! I consider this a sign of the University communication department having switched from an academic perspective, where freedom of information is a primary value, to a business perspective where it is rather control of information that is king.

The transition from democratic, bottom-up governance to more corporate structures is also a something that happened in the UK. I believe Oxford and Cambridge are now the only UK universities where the university senate has any power (and even there, that power has been diluted).

Wow this is a really interesting comment. It is sad to hear that the universities are becoming less democratic. Amidst Grad student protests over low pay and high workloads, higher than ever tuition rates, the pandemic, millionaire administrators on one-hand and starving adjuncts on the other hand, I often wonder where our democratic spirit is. None of this seems democratic at all. Even though what you say is concerning, maybe I should apply for positions in Sweden!

out of curiosity: are departments in Sweden run on a full-cost-accounting model?

@pictorexcrucia It sounds very democratic if you consider that not everyone votes

since that counts as "assisting other parties in their monitoring of progress" - what a disaster...

@ZeroTheHero, the universities get paid once for enrolling a student on a course (HÅS) and once when the student passes (HÅP); there are also various caps at play. How the money is distributed internally is up to the university, but it's common to mimic that basic system for the departments, although some subjects might get more per student than others. Also some portion of the money is diverted as "overhead", and at my university the department has to rent classrooms internally by the hour.

In the US, the job market is so terrible right now that it most likely will not be your choice.  I would not be surprised if the number of tenure-track hires in pure mathematics in research universities in the US over the next year can be counted on my fingers.  While the current situation is due to COVID-19, there is not much or a reason to expect the situation to become an order of magnitude better.  I believe my department has hired its last ever tenure-track(*) pure mathematician.  With such a small number of hires, the only hires will be mathematicians who are at least longshot Fields Medal candidates.
This has very little to do with running like a business.  Universities simply do not have enough funding at the moment.  No one is willing to pay for basic research.  (Honestly - if someone was purely interested in their material well-being, why would they ever pay anyone else to spend time thinking about differential geometry?)
This does not affect people who already have tenure-track or tenured positions very much, because universities are very reluctant to break the (sometimes implicit) agreements they have made with their employees.  At worst we are expected to have more students in our classes than we can actually teach and give passing grades to students who try hard, but have inadequate preparation to learn the material (with the assistance we can give them given class sizes) in our courses.
(*) Our university may at some point reinstate a tenure track for 100%-teaching (or 80%-teaching/20%-service) positions; for the purposes of this answer, I'm not counting such positions (or other similar positions at other universities) as "tenure-track positions".

" I believe my department has hired its last ever tenure-track(*) pure mathematician." Wow that's really sad...
My circle of friends and acquaintances who are mostly research-oriented mathematicians seem to be in a much better position than yours. I know the job market is tough but I do think that you are exaggerating a bit. When the economy recovers from Covid (let's say 4 years from now), getting a decent job as a non-fields medalist should be very very hard but not impossible. We shouldn't really argue about it without actual numbers, however.

@pictorexcrucia If you have a circle of pure mathematician friends around PhD age who are getting tenure-track research jobs, well...You must be living in a whole different world. It does look to me like Alexander's claim was that this year only Fields Medal types have any chance at a job at a research university, not that that will now be a permanent state of affairs. But if, as Alexander says, even jobs at regional R1-class universities are now drying up completely...It was already incredibly difficult to get such a job pre-COVID. I can't even imagine what the market will be like after.

@Kevin Arlin. I didn't say they were around PhD age! Many of them are much older and did a post doc (or sometimes 4) before getting a tenure track job. Nonetheless they didn't win a fields medal.
Of course things are worse now due to Covid. We can only hope it improves.

That being said I really should take what y'all are saying seriously. I think I missed Alexander's point about it being this year in particular. That, I can believe.

@pictorexcrucia: From what I have heard from people of various ages, the history of the job market in the last 50 years has been that, after every crisis, the new normal is noticeably worse (for job seekers) than the old normal.  Also, you can look at the philosophy or literature or history job markets - each about 20-30 years "ahead" of pure math - for comparison.

@pictorexcrucia It is really incomprehensible that many of us became convinced that moving to at least five different cities, often on 2-3 continents, for consecutively no pay, poverty wages, a slim salary, and finally a good salary at age 33-40 constitutes “doing better” than anybody, or any semblance of a career. And remember, that was before. It will likely improve somewhat, but it’s irresponsible to imagine it’ll go back to “normal”, as terrible as normal already was.

@AlexanderWoo do you have a reference for the job markets comparison between these subject fields? Very interested, thanks!

The Modern Language Association, American Historical Association, American Philosophical Association, and American Mathematical Society all compile and keep information on the job market in their subject.

Where I'm from (Ontario, Canada), our current provincial government has implemented something of an outcomes-based evaluation of funding for university programs.  This basically translates into "how many people get jobs once they graduate from your program", although it is more nuanced.
In some sense this is frustrating and anti-academic, because the idea of the academy as a free and open place of inquiry is strong and, in a sense, important.  However, in another sense it is reasonable - taxpayers pay a substantial amount to universities, and many of those taxpayers see university education as both an expectation (for their children) and a route to employment.  There are some of course who feel that learning is important for its own sake, but the current societal winds are blowing in the direction of "higher education is primarily there to get better jobs".
However, and it's a big however, this is not an incompatible worldview with the idea of the academy as a place of free inquiry.  Instead, it adds an additional responsibility on academics to remember the needs of their students.
Long ago, a degree of any sort was a kind of ticket to a better job.  That is not the case anymore, since many more people are getting degrees.  In many, but not all, industries, it is an expectation that someone have a relevant degree, and then they'll start looking at your other qualifications and experience.  Students looking for careers in these fields therefore need to go and get degrees that prepare them for those fields.  Thus, they have a need, that their education be high quality, relevant, and current.
In addition, research funds are easier to get if they are tied either to a project that trains people to be more qualified than they are ("Highly Qualified Personnel", or "HQP", in the lingo of our national science/engineering funding council) or has direct, industrial or societal relevance.  Practically, this means that it is far easier to get lots of funding in engineering than philosophy.
Finally, we are simply churning out a LOT of PhDs.  Seriously, a lot. We are creating more PhDs than there ever were academic positions.  I can only find a source for the US, but since 2000 the number of people with PhDs has doubled.  Doubled!  The number of academic institutions has...not...and so yes, there are a lot of PhDs who simply will never be employed in a university.
So all of this means that there is a growing sense of "justify your existence" in academia that may not have existed before.  It also means that some fields have a lot of work to do to convince people that their existence is justified, and this is not fair to those fields.  Others, like engineering, do not have this problem because for the most part engineers are employed and society values them.  This, too, is not really fair, since it give some programs an easier time than others.
Now, this doesn't mean that academia is a factory.   Fundamental and inquiry-based research can and does happen.  It just can't be the only thing you do. Eventually, you need to go to the people funding you and explain what you've done with their money.  You need to at least keep in mind that they may not be interested in what you are, and that you do have an obligation to give them some kind of return on their investment.

This was a relatively positive answer imo. It seems like in Ontario, in your experience, the problem is more of an over supply of PhD's or a new expectation that people get degrees to get "normal" jobs than the administrators being downright greedy.

Yes.  Basically, I can't lament the attitudes of people who pay my salary - if the public wants me to gear my teaching towards job based, customer-focused stuff, I need to think about why they might want that and what my obligations are to them.  I can't just do whatever I want just because now I'm in a university.   That isn't to say that it's ALL positive, and I respect and treasure inquiry-based research, but I do understand the needs

It does not just effect the academic staff as support staff are cut.
Workshops are closed and all the knowledge of how to make instrument/jigs is lost. Students could just go and discuss a job with a technician; they now have to create CAD drawings and get them made outside. The engineering company has no idea if they will work or not they just make to the drawings.  There is nobody to tweek or modify instruments to re purpose them etc. If something goes wrong with an instrument who is going to fix it as a lot are bespoke?
Speaking from experience!

It's not clear to me how this answers the question asked.

@BryanKrause It does answer the question "what are the consequences of universities rationalizing expenses? How is effecting your work/life?", in my view.

No, universities are not operating more like businesses. They are operating more like farmers of tax money.
A business will seek to provide a good or service that its customers want. A good business will seek to provide a good or service that its customers want, and that is also good for them. Current universities are doing something very different.
Consider the thesis of this book.
The Economic Laws of Scientific Research
His claim (backed up with huge swathes of data and analysis) is this. If you get government out of the business of education, universities will end up with more money, and less restraints. Yes yes, the crowd here that think you can only get money from government grants is outraged.
Outrage is not an argument.  Let me explain the book.
Consider Fred's Transistor Company (FTC). They want some research done on some new semi-conductor. But they don't want to buy their own labs. So they go to the local physics department and ask them. And FTC has to find out what motivates professors.
And that comes under the heading "academic freedom." Part of that is money, but by no means all. It has aspects such as the right to publish your work, the right to read other people's work, the right to have or be a visiting speaker or researcher. The right to get some post-docs in, or research associates. The right to visit some place with special resources or facilities. Like special labs or libraries or archives or research sites, etc. And the right to have a comfortable university with various facilities like poetry readings and art and music and philosophy discussions, and so on. And a good library on campus. And so on and so forth, all the things that make up a university life, which would require many thousands of words to cover even a small fraction.
So FTC negotiates with the physics department. And the science faculty. And the various powers-that-be at the university. And they drop a stack of cash on the physics department, and another stack on the university leadership.
The only restraint is, they want time to make commercial use of the research before it is published in full. After that, they literally do not care what the university does with the money. They can give it to whatever part or portion of the university, for whatever purpose, the university cares to apply. University related funding decisions made internally to the university.
Consider this applied across the uni. This company wants some research on its new thing to keep birds out of airplane flight paths and  maybe out of wind turbines. This company wants to know if this chemical is safe to put in toothpaste. And so on, and so forth. They would all like to get their research done without having to buy their own labs.
Then consider the area of specialty training. This company needs its staff to learn French to do business in Canada. This company needs some staff to learn to recognize artifacts of various types because they deal in antiquities. This company needs staff trained in how to write an environmental report. This company needs staff trained in  how to use the latest equipment in forestry. And so on.
What is the result? Each $2 of government money the university gets removes $3 of private money. And, government money comes with huge sheaves of restraints and restrictions and regulations and paper work and promises and constraints. From "give your research to this three-letter-agency for nothing" to "hire this guy we say needs a job" to "charge students this much tuition, no more or less" to "you can only do this kind of research or no grant for you" to "you must have this many books in your library, this big a sports center, this many faculty-to-students" and so on and so on.
What is the result of taking government money? The need for ever more administrators to deal with the constraints placed by government money. And far less money than private grants would have provided.
Why would a university operate this way? It is clearly bad for students, bad for profs, bad for research, and bad for society at large.
It is good for administrators. And the admin run the unies.
"Pournelle's iron law of bureaucracy" tells us why that is happening.
In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely..
Universities are not operating as businesses. They are operating as cronies of various government agencies and politicians. Admin and government feed and help each other. Governments insist only universities can prepare people for a career, then they prop up the price, then they provide subsidies to pay for the inflated price. Then the admin squashes any dissent within the university, and scares off any private money that might somehow make it in the door. As I mentioned in a comment under another answer, tuition has doubled in ten years. Classes are still full. And grants have gone up 50%. Yet the universities cry poor. That's because steadily more-and-more of the incoming cash is used to feed the admin
and satisfy the government-imposed constraints.
A final quote from the cite behind that word  admin

Figure 3 clearly shows a rather steep decrease in the number of students per administrator over the past 15 years in both SAIS and NAIS schools. For NAIS schools, there were 41.1 students for every administrator in 2001-2002. By 2016-2017, the number of students per administrator lowered to 27. This represents a 53% difference. For SAIS schools, the number of students per administrator was 59 in 2001-2002, by 2016-2017 the number dropped to 39. This represents a 60% difference.

Universities have become places where administrators spend tax money and government subsidized tuition money. They are by no means businesses. They are barely still universities.
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Note added to respond to comments: Why would FTC fund stuff not related to their transistor? I already explained that. They pay the uni for the right to work with the physics department. Or the biology department if it's biology research, or the engineering department if it's engineering research. Or the languages faculty if it's specialty language training.  And so on.
So if you are worried that you couldn't get funding from your uni, even if your uni had 50 percent more money, then you are admitting your fellow professors don't evaluate your work as worth funding.

Part of this argument is not convincing because it equates university dollars with research dollars, and in particular, industry research dollars.  What company will fund research into questions of social justice or the influence of fake news?  Or are we do ignore such questions?

While this is an interesting take, and I will take a look at the book, I think one of the luxuries advanced societies like ours should be able to afford is research in to things that are purely theoretical. This is one of the qualities of ancient Greece that made it impressive. What you describe here as a healthy business-university does not really leave much room for that unless I am misunderstanding something.

There's nuggets of truth in here; but this much overstates the idea that companies are just going to start funding universities to do what they want, and professors will just say "OK." First of all, many fields, there will be no private funding, and second, many professors do not want to take industry dollars to do what their funder wants. Especially the line: you can only do this kind of research or no grant for you. Without the rest of the paragraph, I would have thought this referred to private grants.

The only restraint is, they want time to make commercial use of the research before it is published in full This is a non-starter for a lot of researchers (but then again, I'm not in a field very close to industry).

Why would your FTC go to a University - with its extra overheads relating to teaching, etc. - rather than an electronic/semiconductor CRO which is already geared up to their needs regarding IPR and commercial use? And many  CROs already are private businesses.

To expand on that - one could argue that the purpose of a university to do the things for which there is no ecconomic market. If FTC can dump a load of cash on a CRO, then they should do that. But FTC is not going to pay for basic research that will improve their transistors in 50 years time, or pay for research in Literature or Philosophy. The Uni could charge FTC enough that the extra is siphoned off for these things, but then that would just make the CRO look cheaper.

And FTC definately isn't going to fund 100 projects studying weird bacteria, 1 of which, 30 years later, completely revolutionizes the way a completely different field operates.

Are you all academics in these comments? Are you even aware off the "weak man" fallacy? "I don't think so" isn't an argument. Your claims amount to "I can't get a transistor company to directly fund my research, so private business bad."

@puppetsock I think it was more like "there's a lot of useful research which private business won't fund, so relying solely on private business is bad." If we only did things with an immediately apparent profit potential, we'd still be stuck in the 1900s. No computers.

@user253751 It's already in my answer. Each $2 of government support removes $3 of private funding. 2 is less than 3. You want more research? Then you want more private funding. Also in my answer: They pay for their research AND they pay the uni for the right to get that research. The uni then does what it likes. No strings. You want academic freedom, you want private funding.

@puppetsock you may think that universities would be better if they operated more like businesses than they currently do, but there's no question that they operate more like businesses than they used to. You are entitled to you opinion of the (mostly European in my mind) "public service" university model, but you are mostly criticizing government control over universities and suggesting that they should instead justify their existence by serving corporations as service providers. The "public service" model is that we as a democratic society fund research and education for "the public good".

@puppetsock AND they pay the uni for the right to get that research, this is uh, how do you say, "a string."

While there may be some element of truth here, the claims in this answer come out of thin air. "Each $2 of government money the university gets removes $3 of private money." I can't find any reasoning about why this may be true. Also, and I can't believe this point has to made, companies also place constraints on universities when providing funding. Usually more than research agencies, e.g. NDAs. "[The administration] scares off any private money that might somehow make it in the door." Something tells me the author has no experience with company-funded research.

@puppetsock Your previous comment is interesting.  As an academic, I often wonder what is research and if funding of some sort separates the professional from the dilettante or the downright amateur.  Certainly not: idiots get funding and serious researchers miss out.   If it is funding the defines research, how much funding?  Not all serious research requires the same funding - this is true especially in social sciences where equipment or consumable costs are near-0.

@user3780968 I predict that you will not be able to define "the public good." You won't be able to begin to define it. The implication of objecting to private funding is that "the public good" is bigger government. Every bit of data at hand suggests we are massively far above the optimal amount of government. And getting larger. As I have shown, with data cited. You've only come back with a reflexive claim that government is better, with no evidence.

@cheersmate Data at hand, mate. But, a simple plausibility observation. Government consumes a large fraction of the money it collects in taxes just collecting it. And private individuals and companies spend a lot of their time and resources dealing with taxes. Easily one third of the taxes collected is burnt this way. No government means massively less overhead. See Pournelle's Iron Law.  As to companies putting restrictions on grants. Yes, on the part of the grant for their work. But the rest they literally do not care. And that money is often larger than the part they directly care about.

@puppetsock: "As to companies putting restrictions on grants. Yes, on the part of the grant for their work. But the rest they literally do not care." What "rest"? There's only money left over if the University charges more than it costs to do the work. You've ducked the question of why a company would willingly pay more to have a university do the work than hire a CRO to provide the same results back to said company.

Universities in the U.S.A. routinely encourage vast numbers of students to take calculus, while knowing that the students lack the prerequisite knowledge. Specifically, typical students in first-year calculus have never suspected that mathematics is a subject in which, while learning it, every day one works on understanding why things are as they are, rather than just memorizing dogmas. Never suspected. That is the central lesson of the prerequisite courses. Students have merely learned algorithms and don't suspect there's anything to math besides that. This includes those who have perfect grades in the prerequisites.
Professors teaching such courses are as naive as the students: They explain students deficiencies by saying they are deficiencies of natural ability rather than that the incentive structure is set up in a way that makes that outcome predictable. Teaching that kind of material to students whose reason for being there is not that they want to understand the material, but rather than they either want to get good grades to impress employers or that they want to put requirements behind them, must inevitably have that effect. Far from creating a more enlightened populace, such teaching spreads gross falsehoods.
 Why is this done? Because it brings in tuition money.  Some administrators encourage this practice only for that reason. They are prostitutes. It's amazing how oblivious math professors are to these facts. Professors and students endowed with high degrees of intelligence become stupid in order to game the system. Profoundly so.
One of the worst things about this is that there is an immense amount one could teach such students about mathematics instead of spending all this time, effort, and money on such phony courses.

In some sense I agree with this. But at the same time I don't think I can say a single professor or graduate student at my university holds the philosophy that "students deficiencies ... are deficiencies of natural ability rather than that the incentive structure is set up in a way that makes that outcome predictable."
Having just finished teaching my first calc three course, I certainly hope they actually learned something whether they wanted to or not. I'm (clearly) not oblivious to the university's phony goals but I do have integrity as an instructor.

I genuinely believe students usually get bad grades because they are either distracted or didn't work hard enough. Some of them don't have the background material, but that is more rare. Nonetheless none of these three causes have anything to do with their natural ability.

@pictorexcrucia : You write of the reasons why some students get bad grades, but what about those who work hard and follow instructions and get perfect grades without learning to understand the subject matter? Don't you see that that is why I was writing about?

The things you describe exist. They are certainly not "operating like a business." The motivations arise from the source funding being more and more from government subsidies. Universities are not motivated by making their students successful. They are motivated by getting their students to take out loans and pay the money to the uni. Loans that any sensible bank manager would never give without government backing. And no sensible business would push their customers into because of the hit on their reputation.

To "operate like a business" is not to greedily gobble up every possible dollar available. Not if you want to stay in business longer than the time it takes a student to fail to get a job after graduating. The current student debt crisis could easily wind up bankrupting many universities. If they operated like businesses, that is. But they don't. They operate like tax farmers.

"Some of them don't have the background material, but that is more rare." In the usual first-year calculus course at flagship state universities in the U.S.A., it is at least 80% of the students. Those who get perfect scores on the usual tests of prerequisite knowledge are often nearly 100% ignorant of the prerequisite material, because those tests examine such things as whether students know how to find asymptotes of rational functions, or simplify radicals, or point out which of several lines in an illustration has slope 3, etc. They do not examine the question of......

....whether the students have ever suspected that learning mathematics does not consist of memorizing the standard algorithms for doing things like what they find on those tests, but rather consists of acquiring understanding, and that propositions in mathematics are not dogmas brought down from Mount Sinai by a prophet, but rather in the prerequisites to calculus one works each day at understanding why some bit of math is as it is. Students are not tested on that when they are ostensibly tested on whether they know the prerequisite material.

@puppetsock : (At this point I would write $\qquad \uparrow \qquad$ if this were a place where that works. I.e. see the two comments above.


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What criteria are used to rank graduate programs?
I'm only asking this out of curiosity since I've seen posts/discussions about getting into "top" graduate programs etc. This mentally (wanting to get into a "top" ranked program) makes sense (depending on one's priorities) for undergraduate study, since the selectivity is what gives the degree its "prestige."  This may also hold true for law or medical school programs where rankings may reflect the level of training one receives and/or directly affect internship/residency opportunities etc. However, I'm not sure how this would apply to a research degree.
For example, in masters or PhD research programs, you're applying to conduct research under the auspices of a specific advisor. Thus, it seems that alignment of research interests and personal compatibility should be prioritized over "rank" of the program. Obviously one still has to meet certain admissions criteria regardless of the program they're applying to, but it doesn't make sense (to me anyway) to rank/judge research oriented graduate programs the way one would an undergraduate or "professional" program (i.e medical or law school etc).
Also, will the quality of one's graduate education or future academic career opportunities be affected by the rank of the program? Personally, my main priorities are location combined with compatibility of an advisor. However, I was curious as to what criteria are used to rank graduate programs and why would one prioritize rank of program over other factors.

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/90/68109

Are you asking about "rank" in the sense of the formal rankings that are published by various organizations (and which usually disclose their methodology), or in the more informal sense of "which ones people generally agree are better"?

I was referring to formal ranking ( I'm in a humanities field. but I was speaking more generally.)  When someone says, for example, "I want to get into a top 20 program," I'm assuming that those are formally ranked programs (vs. the person's subjective opinion of the school/program).

Why is this question tagged with "emotional-responses"?

I thought there was an emotional aspect involved since people may feel strongly about their opinions either way (i.e. valuing the student/advisor relationship over rank of the school or vice versa).

@Gemini that's not what this tag is about.

What criteria are used to rank graduate programs?

Before enrolling in a PhD program, you should identify your personal goals and needs, and evaluate graduate programs yourself according to your own criteria.  When doing so, consider life both during and after your graduate studies.  Mathematical formulas for ranging graduate programs do exist, but they are inaccurate and measure something different from your personal needs.  An applicant to a graduate program should be sophisticated enough to perform their own evaluation based on a range of data sources.
In short:  Don't rank graduate programs in same way universities are ranked.
Further, your supervisor is usually more important than your program.

Also, will the quality of one's graduate education or future academic career opportunities be affected by the rank of the program?

This is a duplicate.  University rank/stature - How much does it affect one's career post-Ph.D?

"Don't rank graduate programs in same way universities are ranked.  Further, your supervisor is usually more important than your program." I agree, and that's why I posted this. I see others mentioning  wanting to get into "top" programs, and I wanted to know why they would prioritize rank over advisor at the graduate level.

Rank is prioritized out of ignorance.  However, if your future employer is ignorant (and most employers are not experts in academia) then you should prioritize the way your future employer prioritizes.

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text:
Should I email the program director of a department after being referred to them by another professor/potential advisor?
A couple of weeks ago, I emailed a professor (at a different university) about becoming my graduate advisor. While they didn't explicitly agree to do so (the program isn't accepting new students until next year), they expressed interest in my proposed thesis topic and asked the program director about a specific disability accommodation I mentioned. They also gave me his email in case I had further questions about the logistical issues etc.
My question is: Would it be impolite not to email him or would that seem like I wasn't seriously interested in the program. (The professor answered my questions pretty thoroughly.) I've thought about asking him if they have "rolling admissions" or if it would be too early to apply within the next couple of months (currently studying for the GRE, so I can't apply before I take it), but then I thought that asking such a trivial question might be worse than not contacting him at all.
Also, should I have thanked the professor for their reply? Would replying to such a thorough email with one line such as "Thank you for the information" seem curt, and is it too late since almost two weeks have passed since then?
Update: I emailed the director, and he sent me a friendly reply answering my questions about the deadlines etc. I genuinely was curious about the deadlines, it wasn't that I was making up an excuse to email him, but I thought it might have been a "trivial" question. I don't know how he actually perceived it, but his email was polite and welcoming. I then thanked him for the information.

I think a very kind note of appreciation for her advice and her empathy would be appropriate. You could say that you will be sure to reach out to the program director in the future if specific questions arise. I would expect a note back if I wrote a long email to a student.

However, they also gave me the program director's email in case I had further questions about the logistical issues etc.

If you don't have real further questions, there is no reason to email the program director. Please, respect their time.

Also, should I have thanked the professor for their reply?

You certainly can do it. In this case, you should thank them for the information and point out that it will be useful for your potential application in the next year. This does not commit you to do anything. Also, don't expect a mandatory reply to your thank-you email.

Is emailing a program director with a trivial question worse than not emailing them at all when a professor from their department, whom you want to have as your future advisor, inquired about questions you asked and then gave you their email for further inquiry?

The email was provided to you to answer some logistical questions. In no way, emailing with some made-up or not-bothering you questions will help to "show your interest in the program".

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What can we do about being dissatisfied, morally and practically, by the business-like tactics shown by Universities (in the US and elsewhere)?
I asked this question: Are universities run more and more like businesses? What are the consequences?
A couple days ago. The title was edited by someone and I believe the conversation got a bit derailed. I think the title was edited because my original title implied that universities are run like businesses which might be seen as unfair to people but I am just guessing here.
Anyway, although the responses on my original question were very interesting and I appreciate them, as a young academic myself who will go into the job market in the next 2 years (hopefully) what I am really asking is: Given that you believe the following:

Universities are run like businesses and put profit above quality
Tenure-track positions are declining while "abusive" positions like post-docs and adjuncts are increasing.
Meanwhile super highly paid administrators are getting paid more and more.

What can we, as academics, do to fight this trend or get out of it? Do any of you feel guilty for supporting what I feel like is straight up corruption? Or am I being dramatic?
I never complained about the low pay I received as a graduate student because I felt very grateful to be paid at all to learn high-level mathematics. I didn't mind teaching and I love my research. However, I always believed I would do a post-doc or two and become a tenure-track professor if I worked hard enough and published good papers. However, after witnessing what our post-docs go through and seeing some numbers about how pay is distributed within the university, I can't help but thinking that these are not the kind of organizations I want to be a part of even if I do become one of the few successful ones who gets a decent job. So rather than gripe about it, what are some things that can be done? Or is there basically nothing that we can do? I mean, whatever happens, universities are useless without their professors right? Don't we have some kind of power?

I have made the same observation in the U.S. Quality of education is going down and schools seem to care more about not upsetting students (i.e. customers) than they do about education.

Universities make no "profit". They have no stockholders. Even private universities plow all revenue back into the organization somehow, sometimes by holding it in reserve. State universities in the US can only operate with tax funded support, though that has declined since no one wants to pay taxes anymore, even to get services. You are misguided, I'm afraid.

In a market economy, any organization that puts quality above breaking even disappears in short order.  (In a non-market economy, an organization that wants high quality is just stealing resources from non-consenting others to fund it.)

@Buffy They do not make a "profit" on paper like othe business do. However, they have HUGE endowments which are managed by people paid well over $500k a year. They definitely do not "plow all revenue back into the organization" except to fatten their own paychecks. Sounds like profit to me. Honestly this episode of "The Patriot Act" does a great job of explaining: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YytF2v7Vvw0

@pictorexcrucia: You do the arithmetic, and you realize that this kind of corruption actually makes very little difference.  Even in the worst cases, if the administrators cut all their salaries down to a reasonable level and used the money to improve the conditions for part-time adjuncts, it would only be enough to help a few percent of the adjuncts.  There just isn't enough money overall.  (Budgets are all more or less public info.  Go look.)

Before this question gets closed for not being an answerable question, let me try to give some personal life advice, which might sound frivolous but is serious:
Start your own monastery.
Sure most professors care about the quality of their universities, but they also want time and energy to do their research, or they want to have some perks in their life, or they have families they need to support.  They also realize that, even if they did take over the university, most of the problems would still remain; they still wouldn't have the funding to provide the small classes and individual support and research opportunities their students need, at least if they wanted to pay themselves above minimum wage.
Forget about industry; it's an order of magnitude worse in industry, where there is no way of making enough money to survive, never mind make a profit, without lying to everyone else left and right.

Haha yeah I suppose the question will get closed. Although I really wish some older academics would just give their perspective on how they personally deal with it.
Ironically enough, such things do exist which I have the privilege to be involved in. Of course even if I live in an institute in a small village in Turkey, I will have to make a living somehow.
http://gokovagt.org/institute/doku.php
If enough people wanted to start a math monastery together, it might just work.

@pictorexcrucia: Having looked into these things a little but not a lot, the biggest barrier to being self-sufficient is growing grains (while still having time to do something other than farming).  Small-scale grain farming is hideously inefficient compared to factory farming methods.  Growing vegetables isn't so hard.

@AlexanderWoo Barter: exchange of maths, or other, tuition for grains. With or without money...

@SolarMike: Who would be your customers?  At some point, you're back to trying to start a college - without a reputation to start with - and you're wanting qualified students.  I mean you could probably do SAT prep tutoring, but that's a hella shady business.

@AlexanderWoo so now you want a college? In your answer it was a monastery and monasteries tended to get some of their foodstuffs from outside.

@SolarMike: Monasteries tended to specialize in making some sort of artisan goods in exchange for the foodstuffs they didn't grow.  (Nowadays, monasteries or monastery-equivalents tend to survive on donations.)

@AlexanderWoo yes, I have often consumed beer made in a monastery.


text:
Is it appropriate to "cite" random conversations as the inspiration for a research direction?
In my research internship report, I'm mentioning a successful deep learning experiment. I performed it because another researcher told me it gave them good results for a similar problem.
I need to justify why I tried this, but I can't cite something un-published like this conversation. Is it appropriate to mention it in a footnote, like "according to other researchers, [...]"? Should I search for a citable source that says the same thing, or just drop the justification?

You can cite it as a "private communication" but it's more common (at least in my field, which is physics) to mention the person in the acknowledgements, for example, "We thank A. Smith and B. Jones for useful discussions". You can make the phrasing more specific if you want, for example, "We thank C. Davies for an insighful discussion about deep learning that inspired our approach to this work".


text:
How can I communicate that the word limit prevents you from elaborating something in an essay?
Let's posit:

You're a university student. I don't posit degree level; you can be undergraduate or postgraduate.
You must not overstep the essay's word limit, whatever it is. You lose marks if you overstep.
Your word limit is too short to elaborate an argument or idea.

How do academics write that the word limit precludes elaboration? Is this common or professional? Something like

The word limit prevents me elaborating this idea.

I cannot elaborate this argument here given the word limit.

Or is this stupid? Will the professor already know the word limit precluded you from elaboration?

Does this answer your question? If your essay limits 1500 words, can you just reference essay prompt without discussing it, then criticize it?

@SolarMike no! that other question is 1500 word limit.  this is separate question. even if your word limit is 5000, you can still got not enough words to elaborate an argument or idea.

Is this question about yourself?

You could always write something like "Cuius rei demonstrationem mirabilem sane detexi hanc meditationis exiguitas non caperet", which worked to great effect for a certain luminary scholar of the past. ;)

@Psychonaut That's (verbose) Latin for "handwaving", right?

This is not a duplicate of the other question. It asks a sufficiently general question, seems to be completely on-topic, and has received several good answers that would not fit the other question.

@Psychonaut Ouch, I didn't see that before writing my comment below. In any case, my favourite way to reach a word limit is to write too much and then cut down. It almost always improves the text significantly.

You could always use a variation on "I have a truly marvelous proof of this theorem, but unfortunately, this margin is too small to put it in."

@StephanKolassa Yes, Psychonaut beat you to that by half a day.

If you can not elaborate on ALL arguments, I would use a construct like " ... ,but is beyond the scope of this thesis."

Stock phrases you will hear are "is beyond the scope of this piece" or "is excluded in the interests of conciseness", perhaps with a pointer to where it has been discussed.
You might for example see something like "The fooing of bars became popular in 2025. The full process involved in fooing is beyond the scope of this piece, but the topic is reviewed in Jones et al., 2030".
Or even "The fooing of bars became popular in 2025. Fooing is a complex process (reviewed Jones et al, 2030)".
But probably if you are thinking that you can't fit something in then either:

a. It's not that important and you can leave it out.
b. It is important and you've included something that isn't.

The professor will understand how much can fit within a word limit, and therefore what level of importance is needed for inclusion. If you don't include a connected but unimportant topic, the professor will know why this is. Part of what you are being assessed on is judging which topics are important enough to cover in depth.

"is excluded for concision" saves 3 words compared to your second example. Your "or even" could drop the "reviewed" if desperate, and if you've got free choice of referencing style, (superscript) numbers are fewer words - they're common in my field but not in many

I tend to insist my students include "reviewed" when they are referencing it for the references contained within it. (of course I tell them this first).  "beyond this scope" might be longer, but it is the cliched phrase that is used.

I can see why you'd do that. On the other hand reviews in my field would more appropriately gain "and references therein" if needed, as the summary in a review paper is often the best published description

Indeed, that would also work. The point I make to students is you use reviews in two places - where a topic is out of the scope of the current piece, but you want to point readers to a summary of it - here you should point this out, not claiming the reference as an original source of evidence, OR a reivew can be the first place to propose an interpretation or theory - then the citation is more traditional.

Not really academics, but Steve Job's presentations are just a word. It takes a lot of genius to do that well.

"Scope" does not mean "length."

@AnonymousPhysicist Not necessarily, but it probably does in a well set essay - if the professor is doing their job properly, the word limit should be long enough to be able to discuss things that are within the scope of the piece.

@Nelson - his slides are just a word. Thats not the same as the whole prentation being a single word. Slides =/= presentation.

Word limits are often set by the resources available for grading, not the topic students are writing about.

If a you can only mark so many words, then you should set your questions so that they can be covered in that many words. I also drill students that the first thing they should do when writing an essay is to define their scope.

How to communicate that word limit prevents you from elaborate something in essay?

You don’t. You take the time and put in the effort to make your argument in the available space. If you do that, more likely than not the resulting essay will be a better piece of writing that does a better job of putting your argument across than if it had been longer. Thus, you will have nothing to excuse or apologize for.
And don’t take it from me, many famous thinkers have expressed similar thoughts about the benefits of conciseness (and the difficulty of achieving those benefits). My favorite one of these quotes is Woodrow Wilson’s reply when he was asked how long he takes to write a speech:

“That depends on the length of the speech,” answered the President. “If it is a ten-minute speech it takes me all of two weeks to prepare it; if it is a half-hour speech it takes me a week; if I can talk as long as I want to it requires no preparation at all. I am ready now.”

Nice quote. But my favourite example in conciseness is: "I have a truly wonderful proof for this, but the margin is to narrow to record it." It's unifying Motivation, Future Work and Trolling sections in one.

Yet another from the Bard: "Brevity is the soul of wit".

This. When you start writing job application letters, you need to understand that if you haven't "sold" yourself in the first 30 seconds of reading time, nobody will bother reading any more. Start practicing NOW!!

I'm not sure of your domain.  I'm an engineer.  Our papers always had a word limit.  Taking a topic about which you could write 50 pages and distilling it down to the 5 pages to which you are limited is a great way to tone up your thoughts and produce a much better argument.  Once you get out of academia, brevity is valued - summarizing something in a page is what is expected of you.  I've given presentations to senior management where the guideline is "you are limited to 5 sparse slides to make your point".

It is very true that conciseness improves a piece of text ... but... text limitations are still limitation - you simply cannot claim that you can explain anything in details on 4 pages.

@Make42 - you don’t explain everything, that’s the point. You explain what needs to be explained. Decades ago, my father went to Harvard Business School, where they used the case study method. Each week, for the case at hand, they turned in a paper on the problem, their analysis, and the proposed action and path forward. Total allowed length? 250 words, roughly one double spaced piece of paper. Focusing on the essentials leads to a crisp concise paper and identification of the real issue (not issues).

@JonCuster: Then you need to decide what needs to be explained and what not. The result is e.g. that you leave out your proofs. I think that proofs are important though, but they are often the first thing to go. Then you leave out specific functions (just saying "here we need a function f(x)"), basically saying "figure out yourself which one to use and which one we used in the experiments" and so on. At some point you just wrote an abstract of the general idea and at some point the research gets meaningless.

@Make42 yes, if you are writing a manual for a nuclear reactor or something, four pages won’t be enough. For a college essay on postmodernism where the professor limits you to 1500 words, presumably that’s long enough to say something worthwhile.

@DanRomik: My experience is mostly regarding scientific papers in the fields of applied math and computer science. My point is: All of this might be true for some topics in some situations / assignments, but they do not generalize to all kinds of topics / situations / assignments. I tried to express this with "you can explain anything in details on 4 pages". But to be honest, I just wanted to add a second perspective which and neither planned to turn this into a discussion nor try to put forth some kind of dogma. Maybe I worded my comment harsher than I intended.

How do academics write that word limit occludes elaboration?

We don't normally try to argue our way around them. First, because it would be unprofessional.
Second, because word limits, though inconvenient for the writer, tend to improve the quality for the reader.
We simply get used to word limits and learn to communicate efficiently.

Even if the professor didn't set the word limit themself, they're working in the system that did.  They are well aware of the limit on word count and the restrictions that places on you and every other student.  One reason for it is that they don't want to have to find the relevant material buried in paragraphs that could have been replaced by a handful of citations.
Instead I'll turn your question around: Given a tight word limit, why waste some of it on excuses?

Well said. Let your writing speak for itself, rather than trying to make excuses/apologies for incompleteness within that essay.

Will professor already know word limit occluded you from elaboration?

Yes.  Assume that they will.  Professors deal with word limits constantly.  They are also responsible for reading the directions that state the limit.

Thanks. But "How communicate that word limit prevents you from elaborate something in essay?" I don't think you answered my other questions. Apology!

Your other questions did not need further answering.  "Assume that they will (know)."

I just afraid essay will feel defective, if I don't highlight word limit occluded me from elaborating something. But other answered my affray here.

@ParkKiHyun: Yep, as others have said, part of how you'll be assessed is how well you manage to cover the important/necessary points while staying within that word limit. You're obviously not going to be expected to go into extreme detail in a 500-word essay, for example. What matters is whether you sufficiently touch on the important points while following the instructions. And as Chris H's answer says: You should make the most of the words you do use. Let your writing speak for itself, rather than trying to make excuses/apologies for incompleteness within that essay.

Next to the excellent answers already given.
The word limit is not just a limitation, it is also there to teach you somethings:

Prioritizing: What data does really need to be in here. Nothing is equally important, so prioritize and throw away the least important one.
Writing: Knowing how to write clear and to the point can save you quite a lot of words and can make the paper easier to read.


text:
Why can Oxford or Dublin (Trinity College) graduates be admitted to the equivalent Cambridge degree?
What links Cambridge with Trinity College Dublin? I know

Oxford and Cambridge are frequently lumped together as Oxbridge,

Oxford and Cambridge each have a college called "Trinity College".

Degrees under Statute B II 2 | Student Registry

Under Statute B II 2, the M.A. degree may be conferred on Heads and Fellows of Colleges, University officers, and senior staff of the University Press or Cambridge Assessment if they are not already Cambridge graduates. Graduates of the Universities of Oxford or Dublin (Trinity College) may be admitted to the equivalent Cambridge degree instead of the M.A.
Degrees under Statute B II 2 are full degrees conferring the same rights as the equivalent degrees by examination, i.e. permanent membership of the Senate with its associated privileges and entitlement to submit work for other degrees such as the Ph.D. under Special Regulations or for Higher Doctorates such as the Litt.D. or Sc.D. They are not titular ‘honorary degrees’ (which are awarded by a different process).

Wikipedia explains it in the first paragraph here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_College_Dublin. A bit of history that has been preserved.

If you want to apply, they will decide if and how your qualifications match on a case by case basis.

They were until the late nineteenth century the only three "English" universities. The four old Scottish universities had a similar mutual recognition and admission "ad eundum gradum" system, at least until the 1960s.


text:
Why aren't B.Th., B.Ed., Mus.B., B.Chir. or M.B. degree holders members of Cambridge's Senate?
I don't understand the goal or reason behind B II 2 Degrees | Student Registry, but I'm even more addled by the boldened sentence below. Why aren't these undergraduate degree-holders members of the Senate? I know medicine (MB,BChir) is an undergraduate degree in the British Isles.

Holders of Postgraduate Certificates or the B.Th., B.Ed., Mus.B., B.Chir. or M.B. degrees are not thereby members of the Senate, so may still be able to receive a degree under Statute B II 2 if they are otherwise eligible and do not hold any Cambridge Masters degree or Doctorate. Holders of the LL.B. degree may become members of the Senate by having it formally re-designated as an LL.M., however, and all holders of the B.A. are entitled to the M.A. once they have held the B.A. for the required period.

Seems pretty specific to Cambridge.

To some extent, the answer is "because the statutes and ordinances say so". However: these are not 'standard' Cambridge undergraduate degrees. If you go to Cambridge and study a 3-year undergraduate programme in theology, education, music or medicine, you will graduate with a BA degree. The listed degrees are/were awarded for specific, somewhat vocational, courses - for example, the BTh is a special two-year programme for people training for ordination.


text:
How does one remain focused while studying for the GRE?
The program that I want to apply to isn't accepting students until next year, so that gives me plenty of time to study for the GRE. However, I also want to take it as soon as possible because 1.) As far as I know, they're only offering at home testing until Sept. 30, and I'm way too OCD to take the test in person, even if everyone is wearing a mask. (I have a phobia of germs as it is, and I've become completely paranoid since the pandemic.)  I also want to "get it over with" already because it's a source of anxiety. However, I want to get the best score possible, and I've set my goal as a top 10% verbal score and a math score sufficient for the program not to reject me due to a low score... (I'm applying to a humanities field with virtually no math involved.)
After a week of intense focus (studying most of the day), I've been distracted for the past couple of days with ruminations, and I'd like advice as to how get back on track. How does one stay focused while studying for the GRE?
Also, what is a realistic time frame to study? If I set a date in mid or late Sept., would that be too soon to achieve my goals? (A top 10% verbal score/decent math score [I don't have a number in mind for math])
*question edited to delete my specific ruminations

You should consult a mental health professional about your non-GRE problems mentioned above.

Studying for the GRE is not particularly different from studying for other tests you have taken.  Normal attention span is a few minutes.

You should plan on at most 40 hours a week of studying, doing a mixture of different types of work. Use the rest of your waking time for exercise, relaxation, and mental health.

Your ruminations deflect from the actual question. I'd suggest to delete everything but the last sentence, your goal (top 10%), your strategy (study 8-10h/day, 7 days/week) and your constraints (4 months time, OCD).

Please listen to @AnonymousPhysicist's advice, go to a mental health professional to seek help before it's too late.

A few things that helped me
Pomodoro Technique - Study for 25 minutes with a 5-minute break in-between.  After 4 Pomodoros, give yourself a longer break.
Timeboxing - Limit your study time to specific times of the day, like 9-4 with a lunch break.  This will train your brain to expect to focus during the time-window, then do other things after.  Combine this with the Pomodoro Technique to best utilize your time.
Retake a practice test at the end of each week - This will both get you as familiar with the test as possible, and let you take a snapshot of your progress.  This snapshot should happen during your timebox.  Arrange to take the test during this timebox as well.
Take at least 1 day off a week - Be sure to give yourself at least 1 day off a week where you do not study or do work.
See a therapist - Studying for the GRE and applying to grad schools is stressful.  It may help to deal with your ruminations so they won't be as distracting.  They may also be able to teach you how to manage stress and time better.
It sounds like you may have burned out studying in one week.  Take a day off.  Tomorrow regroup and try at least some of these suggestions.  You'll likely need to play with the times suggested, but they are a good place to start.
Finally, remember that a few hours of focused, uninterrupted time is better than a day filled with interruptions and poor planning.  Make sure you're getting quality study time, then look at increasing the quantity.

There is no universal realistic time frame to study. It primarily depends on where you already are. Some may prepare for several months, while others may prepare for less than a week, and still score just as well or better. Your earlier question suggests that you may be closer to the latter category, at least for the verbal section.
To get a good idea of your current level of preparedness, try solving practice tests under close to realistic testing conditions. See how close or far you are from your target. Identify the areas you are weak in, and prioritize  your time on those. Spending a lot of time on an area you are already good at may make you bored and contribute to your distraction and lack of focus.
There is no end to improving your preparedness, but once you reach a point where you are reasonably certain that you are well prepared to meet and exceed your expectations, it may be better to spend time on something more useful.
This answer does not comment on the issues of anxiety and mental health, on which, as others have already suggested, you should seek advice from trained professionals.


text:
Volunteer undergraduate research system feels wrong?
I am a PhD student at a large state university system. The system hosts a program that encourages undergraduates to get involved in research on a volunteer basis (suggested weekly commitment: 6 hours during a 'regular' academic semester). The projects hosted on the system varies greatly (from data collection to data analysis to manuscript preparation), and I am considering using it to recruit an undergraduate to assist in a systematic literature review. If I recruited a student, they would stand to gain:

Practice in conducting data extraction for articles for a systematic literature review
Practice manuscript preparation
Authorship (nb: if it leads to an accepted publication)
etc...

When I was an undergraduate, I greatly appreciate the opportunity to participate in the research process. However, I was paid for the contributions (in both cash and credit-hour situations). I feel extractive utilizing labor that is volunteered. I have spent considerable time trying to find an in-house university scholarship/funding source for this activity, but to no avail.
While I realize this system must have been vetted and supported by numerous academics with research experience, I feel strange using it. Is it ethical to use this volunteer system? Or should I simply put more time into finding a funding source for the student?
I was also considering setting aside part of my PhD salary for the undergraduate student, but I realize this has tax and legal ramifications beyond my knowledge.

Updates from initial comments:
In general, I agree with the answer posted by @AnonymousPhysicist here. So the question really is, should I still make use of this resource? I would be interested in prioritizing the student well-being, uplifting their success, and trying to leverage the project into tangible monetary and career-advancing rewards for them (conferences, presentations, thesis project, references, etc).

All the projects (nearly 200 in the 2019-2020 academic year) on this system were based on the premise of volunteering (no cash payments or course credit)
The primary purpose of the program is to foster undergraduate interest and participation in the research process, and to encourage students within the university to pursue careers in research
My PhD stipend is meager, but I can't complain given what's going on with COVID-19

So you're saying they receive neither money nor course credit?

One possible way to think about it would be the legal standard for unpaid internships: is the primary purpose to educate the student, or to get work done?

Also related https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/119460/should-undergraduate-researchers-expect-payment

"I was also considering setting aside part of my PhD salary for the undergraduate student" If you are one of the 99.9% of PhD students who is poorly paid, don't.

Updated question to reflect comments

If I understand the system correctly, there is nobody forcing the undergraduate students to participate--it's entirely their choice to become involved. If that's the case, then those students that enroll are (presumably) those with a genuine interest in learning how to do academic research. While financial compensation is always a nice bonus, the real value for these students lies in your mentorship. In that regard, I would encourage you to make use of the system even if you can't find a way to have the students paid...

...for their time. I think that it would be a real shame for a keen and motivated undergrad to miss out on an opportunity to be guided by someone with a passion for mentorship like yours.

@RobertBahensky A 6 hour commitment is about the equivalent of a 2 credit hour semester class. An unpaid project favors students who don't need to otherwise work to fund their schooling.

@mkennedy I don't disagree with you that unpaid research positions might systemically discriminate against students who need to work to fund their schooling. It's a perfectly valid and true point. I just don't understand how it changes my argument. While the system might discriminate against certain students, the students that can afford to volunteer for something like this have, I would presume, an intrinsic motivation to participate. After all, there's a time and opportunity cost associated with doing something for free. I don't see how that should change OP's decision to be involved.

Let me share my own experience:
I've worked in a research group during my undergrad., didn't get paid, didn't get any course credit, have spent more than 9 hours a day, and published an article in Nature Physics without paying anything (doing & publishing research is expensive). In the end, it helped my career a lot, changed me personally & academically. Even though I didn't have much money as a student, it wouldn't have changed anything if they had paid me because I have learned a lot, and my PIs (I had two) spent a lot of time with me.

@RobertBahensky Obviously, mentoring a motivated undergraduate is good for the undergraduate, and is in general good for the mentor. As you acknowledge, it discriminates against certain students. I and others argue that perpetuating that discrimination is worse that the good that comes out of working with whatever students happen to be available.


text:
In layman's terms, what is the difference between OpenAthens and Shibboleth?
I Googled. I don't have Ph.D. computer science to understand What is the difference between Shibboleth and OpenAthens? Too many esoteric words! I  Googled SAML and found Security Assertion Markup Language, but  I don't have time to learn new computer  language! I already trouble English. English is not my first language.

Shibboleth is Open Source software that provides single sign-on infrastructure and supports the SAML standard, as well as other protocols. Shibboleth is usually installed and managed by an institution or publisher.
OpenAthens supports many of the same standards, including SAML but is delivered as a cloud-based solution, supported by a service desk and team of technical specialists who are on hand to assist with setup, integration, and operation. OpenAthens and Shibboleth can happily interoperate, as they are based on many of the same international standards.

Then I try second link on Google.  Hein Online

Now I baffled even more! Shibboleth "federations"? "metadata"?
Other sites list OpenAthens but not Shibboleth. Please explain all this like I'm 5?

When I log in to my university computer account, I see "shibboleth" in the URL of the login page, but that does not convince me that this question has anything to do with academia. I"m inclined to guess that shibboleth is a generic authentication system used by all sorts of computer networks, not just academic ones.

How is this your business, in the first place?

@BernhardDöbler  I don't own these companies. I don't work in them. Just trying to use these websites.

@ParkKiHyun I see you got a complete answerr. However, as a regular user you are actually not supposed to know these names at all. I just thought you might need help to set up a SSO. This should not happen out of the blue.

The Shibboleth Wikipedia page is a good place to start.

Shibboleth is a single sign-on log-in system.... It allows people to sign in using just one identity to various systems run by federations of different organizations or institutions. The federations are often universities or public service organizations.

So, Shibboleth is a software program that large organizations can use to handle having users sign in. It's free software that the organizations can download and use. One nice thing about it is that it supports interoperability: for example, two affiliated universities can form a "federation" within Shibboleth. This allows them to each provide content to their students without sharing content with each other. Better yet, students enrolled at both universities won't need two separate accounts. But, Shibboleth must be set up and maintained by the institutions themselves.
As your link above says, OpenAthens is very similar -- it is more-or-less a large Shibboleth  federation that is managed by a non-profit and comes with a dedicated IT team and help desk. So, a university could just pay to join OpenAthens, and OpenAthens' own employees would help to set everything up, maintain it, and provide user support. Since many institutions use OpenAthens, it is convenient for the end-user as well -- they can use one account for many different content providers, even content providers who don't have any direct relationship with each other.
Note, this is not exclusive to Academia -- large businesses could use this software as well. But in my experience, many people encounter these concepts when dealing with universities or academic publishers.