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Why the United States has the best research universities

131 points by rustoo 6y ago

ubasu 6y ago
Because WWI and Nazi Germany drove the best scientists from Europe to the US?
- imgabe 6y ago
  It's been 80 years. No other great scientists were born in Europe in the past 80 years?
  - freyir 6y ago
    Yes, and then they too moved to the US to study or work. Look at any top US university’s STEM faculty? What percentage are native born? It is shockingly low.
    - imgabe 6y ago
      I don’t think that’s inconsistent with the article’s narrative that the US succeeded by offering strong incentives and prioritizing research. If these brilliant people had the option to do this in their home country, they probably would. Moving to a completely different country is difficult.
aborsy 6y ago
Research focus in US and EU seems a bit different. Europe produces a lot of high quality science. Research in US is on the other hand increasingly application-focused (something that EU is not very good at). This is my observation as a former researcher who has experience in both regions; I don’t have references. It’s partly driven by culture, and economic system. The strong public system in Europe supports longer term research, whereas the strong private sector in US focuses on applications and commercialization. It wasn’t not like that in US few decades ago.
- ramraj07 6y ago
  Citation needed? Never heard or noticed any bias like this before.
  - chronic83027 6y ago
    Look at university research labs, and see where they get their funding from. Companies tend to fund applied research. Funding in Europe, whether academic or industry motivated, is simply lacking across all scientific, engineering, and social science disciplines.
    - SeanLuke 6y ago
      You seriously think that university research in the US is largely funded or driven by companies? This is utterly wrong. *Edit*. The question is why the united states has the "best research universities". That is a very general-level question and the Parent made a very general, and very wrong, claim in response. Regardless of whether some specific fields might have more industrial funding than others, it's easy to google the overall portion: and industry funding is quite minor. https://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/2018-11/UniSource1.jpg https://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/2018-11/UniSource1....
      - ubercore 6y ago
        Depending on the field, it can be. Lots of University-affiliated labs in the medical field get significant industry funding.
      - iancmceachern 6y ago
        This seems on topic: https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/newsroom/newsn/10721/the-color-of-money-funding-sources-for-university-research-influence-commercial-legacy https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/newsroom/newsn/10721/the-color...
      - DiggyJohnson 6y ago
        > is largely funded or driven by companies GP never implied it was the largest contributor, and yes, depending on your field a significant amount of funding does come from the private sector.
desktopninja 6y ago
Lets not fool ourselves. First and foremost the money is here and the business environment (capitalism) is the most favorable than any other region of the world.
- mch82 6y ago
  It hasn’t always been this way. Prior to the 1900s the wealth was outside the US. Capitalism existed in the world before the US, possibly in more extreme forms. It seems like you’re discounting the possibility the US education system & government contributed to the current economic situation. To what do you attribute the change?
  - exdsq 6y ago
    Didn’t the rise of the US as a superpower mainly came down to financial gains during World War 1?
    - boringg 6y ago
      Certainly helped but that is but one lens to look at it. Another lens is the US is endowed with incredible amounts of natural resources that have been utilized over the last century where as former super powers didn't have that same capability. A gross oversimplifications for sure but part of the equation.
    - spideymans 6y ago
      Pretty much. Their main geopolitical rivals in Europe imploded thanks to WWI and WWII. Had Europe not levelled itself, the USA likely would never have caught up in terms of economic superiority, and the USA would've remained a strongly isolationist middle power. (Now keep in mind that the prospect of a peaceful 20th century Europe is unrealistic. Europe was a warring tinderbox at the time, and even if WWI and WWII had not happened, a conflict of similar scale likely would've broken out in Europe regardless. Any number of destructive conflicts could've broken out, including a Soviet invasion of Germany and Western Europe. In short, it's really hard to construct a timeline where the USA wouldn't have been catapulted into superpower status due to war in Europe)
bla3 6y ago
The US has the best research universities in part because it's socially accepted, even expected, to call anything remotely good "the best" over here. People are a bit more restrained elsewhere. For universities, they're admittedly the best by several objective measures too, but the willingness for self-promotion helps :)
- elefanten 6y ago
  This rings true... there’s a tendency to exaggerate or maximalize in the US, certainly at least in the commercial realm.
  - boringg 6y ago
    In this vein [but slightly off topic], can anyone point me to high profile megacap EU startups? The only one that comes to mind is Spotify. I was speaking with some people the other day and probably due to a NA centric focus we were at a lack of well branded EU starts up that had made it similar to US ones.
    - avs733 6y ago
      Klarna, Revolut, and Hellofresh (German founding I believe) immediately pop to mind but I'm sure there are more if I did some searching. The recent trips to Europe I have been so intrigued by how different the apps people use for many common commercial tasks are to the ones I use at home. I'm assuming there are logistical, cultural, or compliance reasons at play but I can't speak to it.
      - boringg 6y ago
        Oh agree that there are a ton of other reasons for it was just curious. And to be honest I don't know any of those companies. Vaguely familiar with Klarna, no clue on Revolut, is hellofresh the originator or the follower of Blue Apron?
        6y ago
knodi 6y ago
Because they have the most money.
- chestertn 6y ago
  Bingo
- NineStarPoint 6y ago
  Deleted
  - cblconfederate 6y ago
    considering how most[1] of the best scientists from most countries eventually immigrate to the US, the reverse is true 1. Probably, based on nobel prizes https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/teaser/19646.jpeg https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/teaser/19646.jpeg
    - TMWNN 6y ago
      "Most" is an exaggeration. But many? Yes. In a survey of scientists from 16 countries (http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-brain-trade http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-bra... ), the US is the top destination from 13 of the 15 others and the #2 choice from the other two. If you are a Canadian scientist, there is a 16% chance (https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/37lgxg/the_global_brain_trade/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/37lgxg/the... ) that you will move to the US. That's not "16% of all Canadian scientists that move out of the country move to the US". Let me repeat: *16% of all Canadian scientists move to the US.* They're also likely to be among the top Canadian scientists, too. By comparison, 5% of all American scientists move to another country, of which 32% go to Canada, so about 1.6-1.7% total. Since the US has nine times more people, that means that in absolute numbers the 1.7% of American scientists is about equal to the 16% of Canadian scientists, but there is no reason to think that the 1.7% makes up the top tier of American scientists; why would the best move north of the border? In other words, the US is receiving the best of Canadian scientists in exchange for an equal number of its non-best.
cblconfederate 6y ago
tenure exists in many countries, sounds relatively irrelevant. After all the US doesnt have nearly as many tenure positions as would be required, as does (not) the rest of the world. In US, even if research doesnt pan out, there's lots of industries to pursue. Also, universities in US/UK have fees and actively pursue students from abroad, whereas this barely exists in continental europe. I doubt there's something structurally superior in US universities, the main reason seems to be that US in general gives the best opportunity to those who are capable, and also, money
dariosalvi78 6y ago
Has it?
1helloworld1 6y ago
American universities attract the best students from all over the world. For example - at Tandon School of Engineering about 80 percent of graduate students hail from foreign countries - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/education/edlife/american-graduate-student-stem.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/education/edlife/american... American academic STEM research is sustained by the constant flow of the best students from all over the world who are willing to spend 12 hours a day for 4-6 years for a meager grad student stipend. Some are actually even willing to pay for the privilege.
- mkoubaa 6y ago
  For some of them it's motivated by a hope for a path to citizenship
- joe_the_user 6y ago
  Your point is the most salient of the comments imo. And better than the self-congratulatory article. US science benefited from a huge influx of European scientists and then sustained itself with large scale grants motivated by the cold war. The US doesn't have great academic freedom but reasonable academic freedom compared to many places and US achievement is the gold standard for many things in many places so a lot of the best people come here and indeed, sacrifice to be here even as lots of money flows into universities - allowing that money to be effective even when some portion flows into pork also. It's paradoxical which allows things to seem "better than ever" and "worse than ever" simultaneously.
- asdff 6y ago
  People from around the world work for low pay in grad school because the opportunities afterwards are much better in the US, either in industry which is where most go now, or even in academia. The federal government dumps more money into research grants than any other country, and this is able to support a lot of researchers and generate a mountain of scientific output.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  My recollection: We attract students from all over the world because you simply can go to school here. Most other countries have significant barriers to entry for college that we lack. In some countries, you have to choose between a trade school track and a college track around the time you enter high school and there is little to no opportunity to change tracks at a later date.
winrid 6y ago
The US values creativity I think in a way many other cultures value discipline. I think we need a bit more discipline, though.
tpmx 6y ago
My impression: Europe does pretty well in non computer-science areas.
- andrewflnr 6y ago
  This is funny to hear, because a lot of the CS research I care about, namely compilers, comes from Europe, particularly IIRC ETH Zurich.
  - tpmx 6y ago
    There will always be exceptions to generalizations. One or a few exceptions dont't make the generalizations less valid.
    - andrewflnr 6y ago
      Fair enough. I wasn't being sarcastic when I said it was funny. :)
- domnomnom 6y ago
  Exception:INRIA.
  - tpmx 6y ago
    I searched for INRIA success stories. I found the MLdonkey peer-to-peer client written in OCaml. (I do remember using it many years ago. It was odd.) Where are the successful, world-changing company spinoffs?
    - andrewflnr 6y ago
      Ok, that's the wrong measure. But didn't they sponsor basically the whole OCaml compiler, which has gone on to be hugely influential?
      - tpmx 6y ago
periheli0n 6y ago
“Best universities” according to which measure? I find it super difficult to come up with a hard set of criteria that measure the performance of an educational institution. Number of graduates? Number of research papers published? Amount of grant income? Can all be gamed. Strength of character and depth of personality of graduates would be a good metric, but is impossible to measure.
- PeterisP 6y ago
  Arguably, "strength of character and depth of personality" is something inherent to the people, not something they get in or from a university. So if you could such a metric, it would reflect which university manages to attract the best highschoolers, not which university is best at educating them (i.e. which university is likely to improve you most should you choose to go there) or producing research results.
  - periheli0n 6y ago
    I tend to disagree. Good universities (as well as other schools) feed students’ curiosity and sense of exploration. Bad ones just push them through an educational assembly line where they graduate at the end. The former boosts students’ self-confidence and personality development, the latter doesn’t.
- esjeon 6y ago
  > Can all be gamed. Yeah, it’s uncomfortable that often the fame comes before the actual quality, because they gamed it. But then there got to be a start. Self-PR is one major critical weapon in the country that pushes freedom to the maximum extent.
  - periheli0n 6y ago
    But how to tell if a university is really the best or just pretends to be?
black_puppydog 6y ago
This (not so much the article, but the discussion so far) reads to me like that essay in the movie "Thank you for Smoking." Highly recommended.
Thaxll 6y ago
In the US it's ok for the private sector to fund universities, very different story in Europe...
rscho 6y ago
And on what criteria are comparisons based? Oh yeah, just the ones that fit american cultural expectations of what being a good university is. How convenient! University grading systems are the truest expression of american cultural imperialism, shaping education systems all around the world.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
FabiansMustDie 6y ago
What a vacuous article; even for one that actually takes a look at the history -- the "how did this come about?" It's as if it's been blanched, and the result taken as all there is to know---a skin-deep truth. The U.S does not have "the best research universities," it simply has the most "prestigious ones," that continue to survive and thrive due to centuries of compounding network effects (and a little of help from the 19th century American middle class and a lot of help from the wholesale philanthropy of our robber barons). Research had been considered a dilettante endeavor, meant only for the betters, until those lower down the ladder decided "I want that," and went off to try and "learn" their way into becoming cultured (see: gentlemen). And not even a single mention of how the real "university revolution" (where being an academic is now a middle class job, instead of simply an upper class past-time), were spear-headed by Fred Taylor and Fred Gates. Both of these preachers-turned-family-office-managers were vital for the adoption and expansion of "scientific" and "medical" schools of thought (in order to fuel the industrial and allopathic medical industries -- to make more money and get more bodies). Skin-deep this article is.
- periheli0n 6y ago
  > Skin-deep this article is. Yoda you have watched lately? SCNR
RGamma 6y ago
Urgh, what a cheap marketing flick. Chasing yet more vanity metrics... Also, what even constitutes "best" (not good) research? Nobody knows.
bumbada 6y ago
1. Because before WWII they(together with the UK) received with open arms the Jews that were expelled by Nazism and were half the Nobel prices in science. 2. Because they won the WWII and took by force the best scientist in Germany that was the leader in the world in science and technology at the time. The other half was taken by the Soviet Union. The lingua franca in science was German, not English. 3.Because after the war, Europe was devastated and living conditions in the reconstruction were very poor(with things like having to work for free for the Government X hours a week) for scientists(and the rest of society) while crossing the Atlantic conditions were much better so the best scientist did. 4. Because after Breton Woods and Marshall's plan, the US became the hegemonic power in the world with the biggest market in the world and started transforming scientific ideas into products that generated wealth and became cheaper as they were mass produced. 5. Because they didn't have a socialistic economy like most of the world had and the best, most ambitious and brightest minds from socialistic countries fled there expecting to share some part of the wealth they created and have the freedom they lacked in their countries. Remember in the block countries being educated in the old bourgeois system,having accumulated wealth in the past or being son or grandson of one who had was a crime, making you a candidate for suspicion and prosecution (and eventual extermination). Stalin had a plan to exterminate all Jews in Russia(almost all revolutionaries like Lenin or Trotsky had Jewish origin), he did not complete his plan because he died before he could. It is incredible that making an analysis they could not see the most obvious and basic geopolitical events.
TMWNN 6y ago
In a survey of scientists from 16 countries (http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-brain-trade http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-bra... ), the US is the top destination from 13 of the 15 others and the #2 choice from the other two. If you are a Canadian scientist, there is a 16% chance (https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/37lgxg/the_global_brain_trade/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/37lgxg/the... ) that you will move to the US. That's not "16% of all Canadian scientists that move out of the country move to the US". Let me repeat: *16% of all Canadian scientists move to the US.* They're also likely to be among the top Canadian scientists, too. By comparison, 5% of all American scientists move to another country, of which 32% go to Canada, so about 1.6-1.7% total. Since the US has nine times more people, that means that in absolute numbers the 1.7% of American scientists is about equal to the 16% of Canadian scientists, but there is no reason to think that the 1.7% makes up the top tier of American scientists; why would the best move north of the border? In other words, the US is receiving the best of Canadian scientists in exchange for an equal number of its non-best.
gumby 6y ago
This brief discussion utterly ignores World War II and James Conant* who transformed the nature of US research universities. While president of Harvard, he was recruited to run the National Defense Research Committee which gave him authority during the war to pour massive funding into key Universities (most notably MIT and UC Berkeley, but numerous others as well) turning them into government research labs just as companies were turned into government armament manufacturers. Oh yeah, the NDRC oversaw the Manhattan project as well. After the war he continued and expanded this program as part of the Cold War effort. You can see this at the major research labs today: MIT, for example, is barely a "University" in the educational sense; it's really a large, mainly government-funded research institution (like the European ones) with a small school bolted onto the side. Education is less than 15% of its budget. Conant also promulgated the SAT BTW; his buddy developed it and also made a fortune on training people and running the test. The usual OB network. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_B._Conant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_B._Conant
seesawtron 6y ago
The title assumes something and goes into looking for answers. How about the following articles from Nature that paint a differnt picture instead of that assumption? [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03318-w https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03318-w [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01922-z https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01922-z
artur_makly 6y ago
Maybe b/c they import indentured "students" from China? (overheard by Eric Weinstein)
rossdavidh 6y ago
So, the ascent of U.S. universities to high status on a worldwide scale, happened in the first half of the 20th century really. Why? Well, because Europe was tearing itself apart in two world wars, and the U.S. sat out the first half of both of those, while receiving a lot of talent fleeing those wars. If you have the money, and the former top-of-the-heap has bombed their wealth into rubble, it doesn't require any magic formula to use that money to get top notch research talent. I don't think any of the rest of what he discusses is necessary to explain this.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- asperous 6y ago
  Plus it might be one of those things were once you have momentum there's a positive feedback loop. Top researchers may want to move to work with others in their field.
- wahern 6y ago
  It wasn't just the U.S. receiving that talent. Latin America, particularly Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile also saw 10s of millions of European immigrants.[1] Germans, Italians, Jews, Poles, etc, as well as Japanese and Chinese. Canada and Australia also saw significant migration. So the mere fact of the emigration of European talent doesn't quite answer the question. The role of European conflict driving emigration isn't at question here. But what distinguished U.S. schools? Why were they better able to leverage this accidental human bounty than other systems? It's not like there was a complete dearth of higher education institutions in Latin America. In the first few decades of the 20th century Argentina and Chile were some of the most well-developed nations on earth, scientifically and politically. [1] Circa 2003 I met a 90-ish-something Mexican born, ethnic Irish docent in the Bisbee, AZ museum. His parents fled Ireland to Mexico and worked a farm in Sonora, then killed in conflict between the Mexican Army and, IIRC, Apaches. He and his older brother trekked through the desert for several days to cross (illegally, I might add) to the U.S. I always thought that was a fascinating story--a nexus of different historical threads that, as an American, you would never really consider together.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
oneplane 6y ago
But does it matter if you have an extreme wealth gap, a culture of fear and violence, and a lot of people living in poverty? It's always nice to point out the things that are doing great according to some metrics, but when put in perspective, what does it end up doing for the people? It shouldn't mean that "unless it benefits blue collar workers it doesn't need to exist", but you'd expect tooting one's own national horn to be put in context a bit better.
- freyir 6y ago
  Is this really a case of “tooting one’s own national horn”? Or is the interviewee just discussing historical global factors that gave US universities an edge over the past centuries? These knee jerk reactions whenever anything vaguely positive is said about the US have gotten a bit tired.
- hackflip 6y ago
  Many cultures value sharing the pizza equally. American culture values making more, and bigger pizzas.
  - oneplane 6y ago
    I suppose that's a good pizza-analogy, perhaps with an addition: ... values making more, and bigger pizzas, even if it means a lot of people get no pizza at all.
bernardv 6y ago
By what measure are US universities evaluated to be “best” at research? It’s a bold claim to make.
- throwastrike 6y ago
  I really don’t think that’s up for a contest. Just MIT and Stanford alone would be considered the best in the world. Now add entities such as the Bell Labs of yesteryears.
forgotmypw17 6y ago
I think two important factors make U.S. unique: 1) The variety of people from different backgrounds cross-pollinating with each other. This takes places in other countries, but not nearly to the same degree. 2) An open and unregimented society, relatively speaking, allows for more cross-pollination with other layers of society. For example, how many other countries make it possible to study under the "Steve Jobs program"?
madis 6y ago
It doesn't
cycomanic 6y ago
The quote below struck me as odd: "The emergence of it [tenure] in the US, in fact, helped place the US on good footing to compete at research with Europe, which does not have that institution as much." because AFAIK many European universities had something like tenure already. In Germany (like today) professors were government employees that could not be fired. I think this had been the case since Humbold and was part of having academic freedom as a pilar of the system. I think both French and British universities had a similar concept. So it is weird that tenure is being painted as something special to the US.
- tehlike 6y ago
  Maybe they are highlighting the competition aspect.
koreanguy 6y ago
European talents, advancement in every core technology in earth, the Koreans like Samsung produce Chips but its European Hardware and technology they are building with, Japanese Technologies are 100% based on European patents, NASA is a European project started end of the war. European research talent has spread to all nations on this earth.
eloisant 6y ago
Well, maybe because they extort indecent amount of money from their students to pay top researchers more than any other country. More than half of the Ph.D. students in US came from abroad.
throwastrike 6y ago
Think it has a lot to do with the fact the US is a free country.
illustriousbear 6y ago
And yet I'd never want to go through the brutal/grinding process of a PhD in the United States. You guys have it really bad in terms of workload, length and insane costs.
splithalf 6y ago
Same reason tech companies go to Silicon Valley. Go where the money is; network effects. Also the US dollar allows unlimited debt to be issued.
david38 6y ago
College rankings, research citations, and money are heavily valued in the US. In Europe, there is much more emphasis on equality. Tons of research funding happens in the US because corporations lobby Congress to give money for research, which props up the status of those schools, and more research comes out. US draws more foreign students than I suspect any other country with all this research money, which in turn draws more status and money.
tpoacher 6y ago
The reason Bulverism is a formal fallacy.

131 points by rustoo 6y ago

ubasu 6y ago

Because WWI and Nazi Germany drove the best scientists from Europe to the US?

imgabe 6y ago
It's been 80 years. No other great scientists were born in Europe in the past 80 years?
- freyir 6y ago
  Yes, and then they too moved to the US to study or work. Look at any top US university’s STEM faculty? What percentage are native born? It is shockingly low.
  - imgabe 6y ago
    I don’t think that’s inconsistent with the article’s narrative that the US succeeded by offering strong incentives and prioritizing research. If these brilliant people had the option to do this in their home country, they probably would. Moving to a completely different country is difficult.

aborsy 6y ago

Research focus in US and EU seems a bit different. Europe produces a lot of high quality science. Research in US is on the other hand increasingly application-focused (something that EU is not very good at). This is my observation as a former researcher who has experience in both regions; I don’t have references. It’s partly driven by culture, and economic system. The strong public system in Europe supports longer term research, whereas the strong private sector in US focuses on applications and commercialization. It wasn’t not like that in US few decades ago.

ramraj07 6y ago
Citation needed? Never heard or noticed any bias like this before.
- chronic83027 6y ago
  Look at university research labs, and see where they get their funding from. Companies tend to fund applied research. Funding in Europe, whether academic or industry motivated, is simply lacking across all scientific, engineering, and social science disciplines.
  - SeanLuke 6y ago
    You seriously think that university research in the US is largely funded or driven by companies? This is utterly wrong. *Edit*. The question is why the united states has the "best research universities". That is a very general-level question and the Parent made a very general, and very wrong, claim in response. Regardless of whether some specific fields might have more industrial funding than others, it's easy to google the overall portion: and industry funding is quite minor. https://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/2018-11/UniSource1.jpg https://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/2018-11/UniSource1....
    - ubercore 6y ago
      Depending on the field, it can be. Lots of University-affiliated labs in the medical field get significant industry funding.
    - iancmceachern 6y ago
      This seems on topic: https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/newsroom/newsn/10721/the-color-of-money-funding-sources-for-university-research-influence-commercial-legacy https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/newsroom/newsn/10721/the-color...
    - DiggyJohnson 6y ago
      > is largely funded or driven by companies GP never implied it was the largest contributor, and yes, depending on your field a significant amount of funding does come from the private sector.

desktopninja 6y ago

Lets not fool ourselves. First and foremost the money is here and the business environment (capitalism) is the most favorable than any other region of the world.

mch82 6y ago
It hasn’t always been this way. Prior to the 1900s the wealth was outside the US. Capitalism existed in the world before the US, possibly in more extreme forms. It seems like you’re discounting the possibility the US education system & government contributed to the current economic situation. To what do you attribute the change?
- exdsq 6y ago
  Didn’t the rise of the US as a superpower mainly came down to financial gains during World War 1?
  - boringg 6y ago
    Certainly helped but that is but one lens to look at it. Another lens is the US is endowed with incredible amounts of natural resources that have been utilized over the last century where as former super powers didn't have that same capability. A gross oversimplifications for sure but part of the equation.
  - spideymans 6y ago
    Pretty much. Their main geopolitical rivals in Europe imploded thanks to WWI and WWII. Had Europe not levelled itself, the USA likely would never have caught up in terms of economic superiority, and the USA would've remained a strongly isolationist middle power. (Now keep in mind that the prospect of a peaceful 20th century Europe is unrealistic. Europe was a warring tinderbox at the time, and even if WWI and WWII had not happened, a conflict of similar scale likely would've broken out in Europe regardless. Any number of destructive conflicts could've broken out, including a Soviet invasion of Germany and Western Europe. In short, it's really hard to construct a timeline where the USA wouldn't have been catapulted into superpower status due to war in Europe)

bla3 6y ago

The US has the best research universities in part because it's socially accepted, even expected, to call anything remotely good "the best" over here. People are a bit more restrained elsewhere. For universities, they're admittedly the best by several objective measures too, but the willingness for self-promotion helps :)

elefanten 6y ago
This rings true... there’s a tendency to exaggerate or maximalize in the US, certainly at least in the commercial realm.
- boringg 6y ago
  In this vein [but slightly off topic], can anyone point me to high profile megacap EU startups? The only one that comes to mind is Spotify. I was speaking with some people the other day and probably due to a NA centric focus we were at a lack of well branded EU starts up that had made it similar to US ones.
  - avs733 6y ago
    Klarna, Revolut, and Hellofresh (German founding I believe) immediately pop to mind but I'm sure there are more if I did some searching. The recent trips to Europe I have been so intrigued by how different the apps people use for many common commercial tasks are to the ones I use at home. I'm assuming there are logistical, cultural, or compliance reasons at play but I can't speak to it.
    - boringg 6y ago
      Oh agree that there are a ton of other reasons for it was just curious. And to be honest I don't know any of those companies. Vaguely familiar with Klarna, no clue on Revolut, is hellofresh the originator or the follower of Blue Apron?
      - 6y ago

knodi 6y ago

Because they have the most money.

chestertn 6y ago
Bingo
NineStarPoint 6y ago
Deleted
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  considering how most[1] of the best scientists from most countries eventually immigrate to the US, the reverse is true 1. Probably, based on nobel prizes https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/teaser/19646.jpeg https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/teaser/19646.jpeg
  - TMWNN 6y ago
    "Most" is an exaggeration. But many? Yes. In a survey of scientists from 16 countries (http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-brain-trade http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-bra... ), the US is the top destination from 13 of the 15 others and the #2 choice from the other two. If you are a Canadian scientist, there is a 16% chance (https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/37lgxg/the_global_brain_trade/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/37lgxg/the... ) that you will move to the US. That's not "16% of all Canadian scientists that move out of the country move to the US". Let me repeat: *16% of all Canadian scientists move to the US.* They're also likely to be among the top Canadian scientists, too. By comparison, 5% of all American scientists move to another country, of which 32% go to Canada, so about 1.6-1.7% total. Since the US has nine times more people, that means that in absolute numbers the 1.7% of American scientists is about equal to the 16% of Canadian scientists, but there is no reason to think that the 1.7% makes up the top tier of American scientists; why would the best move north of the border? In other words, the US is receiving the best of Canadian scientists in exchange for an equal number of its non-best.

cblconfederate 6y ago

tenure exists in many countries, sounds relatively irrelevant. After all the US doesnt have nearly as many tenure positions as would be required, as does (not) the rest of the world. In US, even if research doesnt pan out, there's lots of industries to pursue. Also, universities in US/UK have fees and actively pursue students from abroad, whereas this barely exists in continental europe. I doubt there's something structurally superior in US universities, the main reason seems to be that US in general gives the best opportunity to those who are capable, and also, money

dariosalvi78 6y ago

Has it?

1helloworld1 6y ago

American universities attract the best students from all over the world. For example - at Tandon School of Engineering about 80 percent of graduate students hail from foreign countries - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/education/edlife/american-graduate-student-stem.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/education/edlife/american... American academic STEM research is sustained by the constant flow of the best students from all over the world who are willing to spend 12 hours a day for 4-6 years for a meager grad student stipend. Some are actually even willing to pay for the privilege.

mkoubaa 6y ago
For some of them it's motivated by a hope for a path to citizenship
joe_the_user 6y ago
Your point is the most salient of the comments imo. And better than the self-congratulatory article. US science benefited from a huge influx of European scientists and then sustained itself with large scale grants motivated by the cold war. The US doesn't have great academic freedom but reasonable academic freedom compared to many places and US achievement is the gold standard for many things in many places so a lot of the best people come here and indeed, sacrifice to be here even as lots of money flows into universities - allowing that money to be effective even when some portion flows into pork also. It's paradoxical which allows things to seem "better than ever" and "worse than ever" simultaneously.
asdff 6y ago
People from around the world work for low pay in grad school because the opportunities afterwards are much better in the US, either in industry which is where most go now, or even in academia. The federal government dumps more money into research grants than any other country, and this is able to support a lot of researchers and generate a mountain of scientific output.
DoreenMichele 6y ago
My recollection: We attract students from all over the world because you simply can go to school here. Most other countries have significant barriers to entry for college that we lack. In some countries, you have to choose between a trade school track and a college track around the time you enter high school and there is little to no opportunity to change tracks at a later date.

winrid 6y ago

The US values creativity I think in a way many other cultures value discipline. I think we need a bit more discipline, though.

tpmx 6y ago

My impression: Europe does pretty well in non computer-science areas.

andrewflnr 6y ago
This is funny to hear, because a lot of the CS research I care about, namely compilers, comes from Europe, particularly IIRC ETH Zurich.
- tpmx 6y ago
  There will always be exceptions to generalizations. One or a few exceptions dont't make the generalizations less valid.
  - andrewflnr 6y ago
    Fair enough. I wasn't being sarcastic when I said it was funny. :)
domnomnom 6y ago
Exception:INRIA.
- tpmx 6y ago
  I searched for INRIA success stories. I found the MLdonkey peer-to-peer client written in OCaml. (I do remember using it many years ago. It was odd.) Where are the successful, world-changing company spinoffs?
  - andrewflnr 6y ago
    Ok, that's the wrong measure. But didn't they sponsor basically the whole OCaml compiler, which has gone on to be hugely influential?
    - tpmx 6y ago

periheli0n 6y ago

“Best universities” according to which measure? I find it super difficult to come up with a hard set of criteria that measure the performance of an educational institution. Number of graduates? Number of research papers published? Amount of grant income? Can all be gamed. Strength of character and depth of personality of graduates would be a good metric, but is impossible to measure.

PeterisP 6y ago
Arguably, "strength of character and depth of personality" is something inherent to the people, not something they get in or from a university. So if you could such a metric, it would reflect which university manages to attract the best highschoolers, not which university is best at educating them (i.e. which university is likely to improve you most should you choose to go there) or producing research results.
- periheli0n 6y ago
  I tend to disagree. Good universities (as well as other schools) feed students’ curiosity and sense of exploration. Bad ones just push them through an educational assembly line where they graduate at the end. The former boosts students’ self-confidence and personality development, the latter doesn’t.
esjeon 6y ago
> Can all be gamed. Yeah, it’s uncomfortable that often the fame comes before the actual quality, because they gamed it. But then there got to be a start. Self-PR is one major critical weapon in the country that pushes freedom to the maximum extent.
- periheli0n 6y ago
  But how to tell if a university is really the best or just pretends to be?

black_puppydog 6y ago

This (not so much the article, but the discussion so far) reads to me like that essay in the movie "Thank you for Smoking." Highly recommended.

Thaxll 6y ago

In the US it's ok for the private sector to fund universities, very different story in Europe...

rscho 6y ago

And on what criteria are comparisons based? Oh yeah, just the ones that fit american cultural expectations of what being a good university is. How convenient! University grading systems are the truest expression of american cultural imperialism, shaping education systems all around the world.

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FabiansMustDie 6y ago

What a vacuous article; even for one that actually takes a look at the history -- the "how did this come about?" It's as if it's been blanched, and the result taken as all there is to know---a skin-deep truth. The U.S does not have "the best research universities," it simply has the most "prestigious ones," that continue to survive and thrive due to centuries of compounding network effects (and a little of help from the 19th century American middle class and a lot of help from the wholesale philanthropy of our robber barons). Research had been considered a dilettante endeavor, meant only for the betters, until those lower down the ladder decided "I want that," and went off to try and "learn" their way into becoming cultured (see: gentlemen). And not even a single mention of how the real "university revolution" (where being an academic is now a middle class job, instead of simply an upper class past-time), were spear-headed by Fred Taylor and Fred Gates. Both of these preachers-turned-family-office-managers were vital for the adoption and expansion of "scientific" and "medical" schools of thought (in order to fuel the industrial and allopathic medical industries -- to make more money and get more bodies). Skin-deep this article is.

periheli0n 6y ago
> Skin-deep this article is. Yoda you have watched lately? SCNR

RGamma 6y ago

Urgh, what a cheap marketing flick. Chasing yet more vanity metrics... Also, what even constitutes "best" (not good) research? Nobody knows.

bumbada 6y ago

1. Because before WWII they(together with the UK) received with open arms the Jews that were expelled by Nazism and were half the Nobel prices in science. 2. Because they won the WWII and took by force the best scientist in Germany that was the leader in the world in science and technology at the time. The other half was taken by the Soviet Union. The lingua franca in science was German, not English. 3.Because after the war, Europe was devastated and living conditions in the reconstruction were very poor(with things like having to work for free for the Government X hours a week) for scientists(and the rest of society) while crossing the Atlantic conditions were much better so the best scientist did. 4. Because after Breton Woods and Marshall's plan, the US became the hegemonic power in the world with the biggest market in the world and started transforming scientific ideas into products that generated wealth and became cheaper as they were mass produced. 5. Because they didn't have a socialistic economy like most of the world had and the best, most ambitious and brightest minds from socialistic countries fled there expecting to share some part of the wealth they created and have the freedom they lacked in their countries. Remember in the block countries being educated in the old bourgeois system,having accumulated wealth in the past or being son or grandson of one who had was a crime, making you a candidate for suspicion and prosecution (and eventual extermination). Stalin had a plan to exterminate all Jews in Russia(almost all revolutionaries like Lenin or Trotsky had Jewish origin), he did not complete his plan because he died before he could. It is incredible that making an analysis they could not see the most obvious and basic geopolitical events.

TMWNN 6y ago

In a survey of scientists from 16 countries (http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-brain-trade http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-bra... ), the US is the top destination from 13 of the 15 others and the #2 choice from the other two. If you are a Canadian scientist, there is a 16% chance (https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/37lgxg/the_global_brain_trade/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/37lgxg/the... ) that you will move to the US. That's not "16% of all Canadian scientists that move out of the country move to the US". Let me repeat: *16% of all Canadian scientists move to the US.* They're also likely to be among the top Canadian scientists, too. By comparison, 5% of all American scientists move to another country, of which 32% go to Canada, so about 1.6-1.7% total. Since the US has nine times more people, that means that in absolute numbers the 1.7% of American scientists is about equal to the 16% of Canadian scientists, but there is no reason to think that the 1.7% makes up the top tier of American scientists; why would the best move north of the border? In other words, the US is receiving the best of Canadian scientists in exchange for an equal number of its non-best.

gumby 6y ago

This brief discussion utterly ignores World War II and James Conant* who transformed the nature of US research universities. While president of Harvard, he was recruited to run the National Defense Research Committee which gave him authority during the war to pour massive funding into key Universities (most notably MIT and UC Berkeley, but numerous others as well) turning them into government research labs just as companies were turned into government armament manufacturers. Oh yeah, the NDRC oversaw the Manhattan project as well. After the war he continued and expanded this program as part of the Cold War effort. You can see this at the major research labs today: MIT, for example, is barely a "University" in the educational sense; it's really a large, mainly government-funded research institution (like the European ones) with a small school bolted onto the side. Education is less than 15% of its budget. Conant also promulgated the SAT BTW; his buddy developed it and also made a fortune on training people and running the test. The usual OB network. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_B._Conant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_B._Conant

seesawtron 6y ago

The title assumes something and goes into looking for answers. How about the following articles from Nature that paint a differnt picture instead of that assumption? [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03318-w https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03318-w [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01922-z https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01922-z

artur_makly 6y ago

Maybe b/c they import indentured "students" from China? (overheard by Eric Weinstein)

rossdavidh 6y ago

So, the ascent of U.S. universities to high status on a worldwide scale, happened in the first half of the 20th century really. Why? Well, because Europe was tearing itself apart in two world wars, and the U.S. sat out the first half of both of those, while receiving a lot of talent fleeing those wars. If you have the money, and the former top-of-the-heap has bombed their wealth into rubble, it doesn't require any magic formula to use that money to get top notch research talent. I don't think any of the rest of what he discusses is necessary to explain this.

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asperous 6y ago
Plus it might be one of those things were once you have momentum there's a positive feedback loop. Top researchers may want to move to work with others in their field.
wahern 6y ago
It wasn't just the U.S. receiving that talent. Latin America, particularly Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile also saw 10s of millions of European immigrants.[1] Germans, Italians, Jews, Poles, etc, as well as Japanese and Chinese. Canada and Australia also saw significant migration. So the mere fact of the emigration of European talent doesn't quite answer the question. The role of European conflict driving emigration isn't at question here. But what distinguished U.S. schools? Why were they better able to leverage this accidental human bounty than other systems? It's not like there was a complete dearth of higher education institutions in Latin America. In the first few decades of the 20th century Argentina and Chile were some of the most well-developed nations on earth, scientifically and politically. [1] Circa 2003 I met a 90-ish-something Mexican born, ethnic Irish docent in the Bisbee, AZ museum. His parents fled Ireland to Mexico and worked a farm in Sonora, then killed in conflict between the Mexican Army and, IIRC, Apaches. He and his older brother trekked through the desert for several days to cross (illegally, I might add) to the U.S. I always thought that was a fascinating story--a nexus of different historical threads that, as an American, you would never really consider together.

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oneplane 6y ago

But does it matter if you have an extreme wealth gap, a culture of fear and violence, and a lot of people living in poverty? It's always nice to point out the things that are doing great according to some metrics, but when put in perspective, what does it end up doing for the people? It shouldn't mean that "unless it benefits blue collar workers it doesn't need to exist", but you'd expect tooting one's own national horn to be put in context a bit better.

freyir 6y ago
Is this really a case of “tooting one’s own national horn”? Or is the interviewee just discussing historical global factors that gave US universities an edge over the past centuries? These knee jerk reactions whenever anything vaguely positive is said about the US have gotten a bit tired.
hackflip 6y ago
Many cultures value sharing the pizza equally. American culture values making more, and bigger pizzas.
- oneplane 6y ago
  I suppose that's a good pizza-analogy, perhaps with an addition: ... values making more, and bigger pizzas, even if it means a lot of people get no pizza at all.

bernardv 6y ago

By what measure are US universities evaluated to be “best” at research? It’s a bold claim to make.

throwastrike 6y ago
I really don’t think that’s up for a contest. Just MIT and Stanford alone would be considered the best in the world. Now add entities such as the Bell Labs of yesteryears.

forgotmypw17 6y ago

I think two important factors make U.S. unique: 1) The variety of people from different backgrounds cross-pollinating with each other. This takes places in other countries, but not nearly to the same degree. 2) An open and unregimented society, relatively speaking, allows for more cross-pollination with other layers of society. For example, how many other countries make it possible to study under the "Steve Jobs program"?

madis 6y ago

It doesn't

cycomanic 6y ago

The quote below struck me as odd: "The emergence of it [tenure] in the US, in fact, helped place the US on good footing to compete at research with Europe, which does not have that institution as much." because AFAIK many European universities had something like tenure already. In Germany (like today) professors were government employees that could not be fired. I think this had been the case since Humbold and was part of having academic freedom as a pilar of the system. I think both French and British universities had a similar concept. So it is weird that tenure is being painted as something special to the US.

tehlike 6y ago
Maybe they are highlighting the competition aspect.

koreanguy 6y ago

European talents, advancement in every core technology in earth, the Koreans like Samsung produce Chips but its European Hardware and technology they are building with, Japanese Technologies are 100% based on European patents, NASA is a European project started end of the war. European research talent has spread to all nations on this earth.

eloisant 6y ago

Well, maybe because they extort indecent amount of money from their students to pay top researchers more than any other country. More than half of the Ph.D. students in US came from abroad.

throwastrike 6y ago

Think it has a lot to do with the fact the US is a free country.

illustriousbear 6y ago

And yet I'd never want to go through the brutal/grinding process of a PhD in the United States. You guys have it really bad in terms of workload, length and insane costs.

splithalf 6y ago

Same reason tech companies go to Silicon Valley. Go where the money is; network effects. Also the US dollar allows unlimited debt to be issued.

david38 6y ago

College rankings, research citations, and money are heavily valued in the US. In Europe, there is much more emphasis on equality. Tons of research funding happens in the US because corporations lobby Congress to give money for research, which props up the status of those schools, and more research comes out. US draws more foreign students than I suspect any other country with all this research money, which in turn draws more status and money.

tpoacher 6y ago

The reason Bulverism is a formal fallacy.