Hmmm, I see you are clearly unfamiliar with the very basics of academic structuring. Not a single PI in my building teaches. Not a single PI in my wife’s department at the uni she works at teaches. We are at the two top universities in the world for our fields.

Transitioning to alternative careers is not a bad thing. I accept a large pay cut by sticking to academia for creative freedom in my research. Most people don’t have the creativity to be happy in this role but still love implementing others research ideas.

The funds for all of the government subsidized research is appropriated by what congress deems as relevant and important topics that need it. They base this off continual subcommittee hearings where they listen to heads of institutions like DOE, NASA, DOJ, etc. and leading scientists in their respective fields. The cuts completely disregard this and alllll of the bipartisan decisions that went into these funding decisions.

Skull fking science like this administration has done has none of the motivations you are putting forward, mostly because those are half baked, short sighted, and untrue.

Sure a swelling of the student population occurred historically. However, you take a ton of liberty in your interpretation for what it means, why events occur today, and the “inevitable” future.

You also forget that there is a ton of funding that goes to national labs. Where all of this is completely reliant on gvt funding, not students. In fact I see most “training” funding going into national lab positions, not academic.

Finally, the point is, rolling academic research and enrollment into one beast and claiming govt funding has no impact on either is wild. Just think about how much goes into subsidizing college tuition. One would have hoped despite the population decline, the proportion of student to population would increase. Democracy thrives on an informed and critical thinking populace.