The Big Macs are so predictable from year to year that I'm not bothering to write original prose this time out. This text has been revised from last year's. New numbers, a few other things – no list of institutions (find that at the NYTimes or at the MacArthur Foundation), otherwise the same. Be sure to check out my full report, listed at the end of the post.
No doubt they are a worthy crew. But the foundation keeps doing it, by which I mean they award the majority of their Big Mac fellowships to people who already have secure jobs at good places, mostly colleges and universities. Some of these are the kinds of places that prompt rich people to hire consultants who then fake test results and/or bribe officials on behalf of their students.
I started keeping track of this in 2013, when 63% of the fellowships went to fellows with secure gigs. This year it’s 67% (14 out or 21), up from 55% last year. Here’s how it’s gone since 2013:
2013: 63%
2014: 52%
2015: 54%
2016: 57%
2017: 50%
2018: 52%
2019: 65%
2020: 67%
What, you ask, is wrong with that? Well, the original intent was to fund very creative people whose very creativity made it difficult or impossible for them to get such jobs, people who had to wait tables, do temp office work, and who knows, maybe work in an Amazon warehouse schlepping orders. The idea was to fund people who really need the money in order to exercise their creativity.
These aren’t those people. They have secure gigs. My suggestion was and remains simple: Don’t fund people who don’t need the money (in order to survive). Stop taking the easy way out by funding people with university gigs. Take more risks.
In previous years I’ve gone to the trouble of making a table of the winners and listing their field, their place of employment (for most of them, though a few don’t have regular gigs), and classifying them into secure university posts (guaranteed employment), pre-tenure university (not yet guaranteed), other-employed, and self-employed. This year I’ve not done that. It’s tiring and pointless.
This year the foundation gave out 21 awards, of which 14 went to people at universities, colleges, or research institutes; six others were independent and so could really use the money ($625,000 over five years), while one had a non-university gig.
If you want to read my arguments, you can check out my working paper, which includes year-by-year commentary along with more general commentary on the program and on talent search:
The Genius Chronicles: Going Boldly Where None Have Gone Before? Version 67 Working Paper, October 2018, 61 pp.
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