Over the long term, yes. However, universities like Buffalo might have some peculiarities. They are overall run by the state government, and professors/students/staff are state employees. In addition, the money that pays their salary often comes from the federal government (NSF, DOE, NIH) which comes with their own restrictions and regulations beyond typical accounting practices.
So things like reimbursements are handled by a university trying to implement a state government's interpretation of both granting agencies desires and federal and state laws/regulations.
My university seems to be going crazy with rules lately. My hypothesis is that the state, and by extension the university, wants to button down everything so as not draw attention of the federal government (given who is in charge). It's taking already stressed professors (funding cuts, etc) and piling on more stress.
do you know anyone closely enough to ask and get an honest answer? in my experience, academics say this is all administrative bloat that has been increasing forever.
I’ve been working on splitting an idea out from government-funded academia into an industry-supported non-profit. Universities kind of like that, and industries (at least in my scientific domain) are fairly receptive to consortium-type arrangements.
Of course, industry is pretty gun-shy right now too, due to the general economic conditions and AI sucking all the investment out of everything else. So it’s not going according to plan.
> a commuter plane where the wings iced up a bit and the airplane stalled. The crew kept trying to pull the nose up, all the way to the ground.
There’s probably a lot that match, but sounds like Colgan Air 3407 in 2009 (the last major commercial airline crash in the US before the mid-air collision earlier this year in DC)
First paragraph for those unsure whether they want to prove that they are human (and for non-humans of course):
"Just this month, Meta Platforms Inc. has secured about $60 billion in capital to build data centers, part of its spending to get ahead in the artificial intelligence race. Half of that won’t show up on the social media giant’s balance sheet as debt.…"
OpenAI "spent" more on sales/marketing and equity compensation than that:
"Other significant costs included $2 billion spent on sales and marketing, nearly doubling what OpenAI spent on sales and marketing in all of 2024. Though not a cash expense, OpenAI also spent nearly $2.5 billion on stock-based equity compensation in the first six months of 2025"
I’ve always found the pioneer, settler, town planner model to be a great way of thinking about this. Successful, long-term projects or organizations eventually can use all 3 types.
Maybe vibe coding replaces some pioneering work, but that still leaves a lot for settlers to do.
We already do have different kinds of organizations. We have "research universities" (R1 or R2) that give out PhDs and are somewhat like you describe. And then we have Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs) that focus more on education.
The risk you can run into is that dedicated education institutions can fall behind current trends, especially in fast-moving areas like tech. Sometimes the best educators are those that "practice what they preach", and you begin to lose that if you stick them in classrooms all day.
On the other hand, some of the best researchers are terrible teachers, especially those who don't really care about it and just want to focus on bringing in funding.
I think the split you have could work, however there must be a lot of incentive for cross-pollination of some sort, or else the teaching side isn't preparing students enough for the research (or industry) side.
So things like reimbursements are handled by a university trying to implement a state government's interpretation of both granting agencies desires and federal and state laws/regulations.
My university seems to be going crazy with rules lately. My hypothesis is that the state, and by extension the university, wants to button down everything so as not draw attention of the federal government (given who is in charge). It's taking already stressed professors (funding cuts, etc) and piling on more stress.
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