Education Links, 1/25/2026

Don Taylor on Duke University's business model; Karen deLaski on low-status occupations; Michael Strong on the ultimate ends; Austin Scholar on what teenagers really want

Don Taylor writes,

Duke had net assets of $22.6 Billion at the end of fiscal year 2024, according to Duke Public Financial Statement 2023-24 (see figure below, from p. 4: Net assets of the University, including the School of Medicine, were $16.6B; Net assets for Duke University Health System (DUHS), were $6.0B)….

• Research grants and contracts represent ~ 4 in 10 University dollars; the U.S. federal government provided approximately $1 Billion, with private foundations $410 Million. The School of Medicine alone had just over $1.1 Billion in total research grant funding that year

• Investment returns are a larger source of Duke University revenue (21% v. 15%) than tuition (net of financial aid)

Pointer from Tyler Cowen. The economic impact of students is relatively marginal. The income from the endowment and research grants matters more. I’m guessing that a lot of the leading universities look like this.

Kathleen deLaski writes,

Here’s the dirty secret. Not enough of “our” kids want to go for either the factory jobs or the moonshot jobs of new technologies. We could say they don’t want to work that hard, but obviously, it’s a much more complex social phenomenon. Are they applying, but not getting hired, because they are not as well trained or more expensive than foreign workers? We hear increasingly that members of the Gen Z generation don’t have the math preparation to excel in high level classes at the college level. Or some don’t want to head down a corporate track to support what they consider to be “late-stage capitalism,”

Among her recommendations:

High Schools: Help your students job shadow the coolest technical job you can find someone in to demonstrate that math and science are worth the effort, and can lead to interesting careers. Bear down on math preparation. (Easy for me to say.) Perhaps, fashion the Robotics Club into a mandatory Class. But also, can we infuse those human skills, like oral communication? This failing middle school in NYC turned around test scores by infusing debate training into every class.

Colleges: Offer majors that help non-math whizzes aspire to technology careers

Michael Strong writes,

The ability to take initiative and be agentic, to make wise decisions about one’s life, to master one’s appetites to avoid addiction and indulgences that are unhealthy, the ability to develop and maintain healthy relationships with others are all likely to continue to be valuable human characteristics long into the future.

He is questioning the obsession with intelligence, either human or machine. And he has this line:

The Marxist episode, wherein most of academia has been sympathetic to Marxism, the most successfully murderous ideology in history, for a century now, should disabuse us of human intelligence as a sufficient foundation for ensuring human flourishing.

Austin Scholar writes,

When you think about a stereotypical teenager, these things probably come to mind:

• Sleeps until noon

• Fights about everything

• Glued to their phone

• Hates school

  …

But Matt points out that these “typical” teenage behaviors are actually symptoms of developmental dysfunction. Here’s how Matt explains what a developmentally healthy teenager looks like:

She wakes up with things she wants to accomplish. Not because someone’s making her, but because she’s genuinely excited about her projects.

She links to a presentation by Matt Bateman.

Matt explains that teenagers who do real things now become adults who thrive. Teenagers who do fake things become adults who... need therapy to figure out what they actually want.

substacks referenced above: @

Austin Scholar #198: What does it mean to be a “normal” kid?

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From IQ Fetish to Virtue Culture Creation

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The talent pipeline "our" kids want no part of

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Duke University