For top schools, money is secondary to building and maintaining reputation and leadership in research. Money comes as a consequence of being leaders, Think of

For top schools, money is secondary to building and maintaining reputation and leadership in research. Money comes as a consequence of being leaders, Think of Carnegie Mellon Robotics professors and grad students poached by Uber. Think of top graph computer scientists who joined Facebook and Google early on. A lot of this men and women were bright international students/professors flocking to top US univs. These bright people (directly and indirectly) invited budding geniuses from their home countries to come to these univs in the US. A lot of countries would love to have such a concentration of bright talent (and the network effects) in their univs.