You're fooling yourself (or someone is fooling you). The small numbers just don't make sense. $1k-10k is such a miniscule portion of the total cost of even a grad student+. No PI with even the vaguest hint of a conscience is using uncertain 1k-10k increments as anything other than purely supplementary funding; if one project doesn't work out your student is done. In fact, I doubt that most universities would even let a professor take on/keep a student with that sort of funding scheme. And it certainly wouldn't be enough for a tenure case.
You do realize that the average CS professor in the US spends many thousands of dollars per year, just on conference travel, just for themselves, right? $5k or even $10k for a side project really isn't substantive.
+ which in the sciences is usually in the mid five to low six figure range, before the cost of lab materials, travel, etc.
Of course, no one has yet funded their entire PhD this way. It is however a fantastic way to fund a conference trip. There've been quite a few successful projects funding conference presentations or travel.
In my experience speaking with program officers and grant reviewers, particularly NSF, the public or 'broader impact' section of a grant application is starting to grow in importance, because like I said above, it's become a way for grantees to stand apart from the growing number of applicants. So having more to put in that section certainly helps, and I do know that it's come up with a few tenure committees (successfully). It just depends on who, where you are, what field, etc.
CSE is always a bit of an outlier, given the lower costs but still. I realize your hostility is towards the notion of someone being entirely alternatively funded, which we've never claimed to do.
> and I do know that it's come up with a few tenure committees
If you're saying what I think you are, then that's exactly what I meant by the sex appeal comment. Regardless of how it's talked about, people aren't treating it as an alternative; rather, it's a particularly sexy supplement (because it's new and because it addresses dissimination / public awareness / education broader impact criteria that their more traditional sources of funding care about). So even though they could have picked up 2k in travel funding from a random pool of university cash or just funded everything out of an existing grant, they do the crowd funding thing instead for the sex appeal factor. But it's also possible that's not the case, they really need the money, and I've just spent too much time around the wrong types of academics.
> I realize your hostility is towards the notion of someone being entirely alternatively funded, which we've never claimed to do.
I don't mean to sound hostile. Maybe incredulous. Your earlier posts certainly sounded like you were proposing an alternative :-)
You do realize that the average CS professor in the US spends many thousands of dollars per year, just on conference travel, just for themselves, right? $5k or even $10k for a side project really isn't substantive.
+ which in the sciences is usually in the mid five to low six figure range, before the cost of lab materials, travel, etc.