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Why Does the U.S. Have the Best Research Universities? (2020)

68 points by ilarum 4y ago

jschveibinz 4y ago
US government funding of university research and operations is a very important factor. In 2018, almost $150 billion USD in total was invested in universities. https://datalab.usaspending.gov/colleges-and-universities/ https://datalab.usaspending.gov/colleges-and-universities/ https://www.science.org/content/article/pandemic-pounds-us-universities-federal-support-helps-their-labs-stay-afloat https://www.science.org/content/article/pandemic-pounds-us-u...
- tnel77 4y ago
  I’m told that we don’t spend anything on education so this must be false.
  - dekhn 4y ago
    The US chronically underfunds pre-college education. Universities are typically flush with money coming from grants usually from the government but also rich people. Often a large fraction of the grant money a professor obtains is siphoned off to dean's lush funds which help support education, hiring top professors, etc.
    - streptomycin 4y ago
      > The US chronically underfunds pre-college education Not true, US spends more on pre-college education than nearly any other country https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp...
      - dekhn 4y ago
        yes, but that spend isn't well distributed, and things are more expensive in the US (I assume your nubers are not corrected for the price index of each country).
        streptomycin 4y ago
        That's true, but generally the worst school districts are the ones that get the most money, although the exact way money is distributed varies by region. For instance, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbott_district https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbott_district describes how NJ gives tons of money to schools in poor areas, although it does not seem to have produced any better educational outcomes.
        juve1996 4y ago
        Does "get the most money" equate to "has the most money?"
        streptomycin 4y ago
        Not sure what the difference is. But it does seem that no matter how much money you throw at a problem with no measurable impact, there will always be people claiming just a little bit more is needed because this time something will be different and it won't be squandered.
        juve1996 4y ago
        We have very clear evidence money solves a lot of problems. Why doesn't it work here? It works everywhere else in our capitalist economy. In any case the difference is quite clear. If a school in a rich suburb doesn't get much federal money than, say, a inner city school, that gets a lot. That rich suburb already has money. They obviously wouldn't get further funding - but are likely much richer?
        streptomycin 4y ago
        The numbers I cited before were total $ per pupil from all sources.
        juve1996 4y ago
    - suchow 4y ago
      It’s rare for a large fraction of grant money to be siphoned to a Dean’s discretionary fund. Typically some smallish fraction (maybe 10%, often significantly less) of indirect costs (which, depending on the funder and the negotiated F&A rate may be anywhere from 0% or nearly 100% on top of the direct costs that fund the research staff and materials, etc.) goes back to the subdivision overseen by that Dean to do with as they please. Everywhere I’ve worked, that amounts to a few (low single digit) percent of total costs being used in the way you describe. And many places return none of indirects to the unit overseeing the PI and so then it’s a cool zero percent.
    - jschveibinz 4y ago
      TL;DR In the US, primary education is a local matter An interesting note here is that in the US, federal government dollars are not a major funding component of primary education (k-12). Less than 8% (around $60 billion) of the total cost comes from the federal government; the rest comes from state and local property taxes. https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statistics https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statisti... https://www.pgpf.org/budget-basics/how-is-k-12-education-funded https://www.pgpf.org/budget-basics/how-is-k-12-education-fun...
    - TMWNN 4y ago
      >The US chronically underfunds pre-college education. As streptomycin said, you are wrong. New York City spends more per student than anywhere else in the US (<https://www.silive.com/news/2019/06/how-much-does-new-york-city-spend-on-each-student.html https://www.silive.com/news/2019/06/how-much-does-new-york-c...>). Baltimore, an incredibly poor and run-down city, spends the third most. #4-6 and #8 are all wealthy suburbs of Washington DC, but their schools are all far better than those of Baltimore or NYC on average, despite Baltimore spending slightly more per student and NYC spending 60-70% more. Money can only do so much against dysfunctional families immersed in dysfunctional ethno-societal groups.
edmcnulty101 4y ago
I would love an accounting of things that the universities have discovered that have trickled down to the public in the past century. I'm still using essentially the same internal combustion vehicle, phone, and literally everything that I was using decades ago and more or less that my parents were using. My phone is a little better, that's about it. What is this 150 billion of our tax dollars a year getting us? A telescopic photograph of chorizo? Elon Musk has moved the needle much more than all of the universities combined it seems like. We just take for granted that giving money to science is a good investment. I've worked in university science labs and they're extremely inefficient, incompetent, and low labor. One view is that this money is scientific welfare.
- projectramo 4y ago
  Whom does he hire to help build those cars, rockets and tunnels? Graduates of universities or Oompa Loompas?
  - jacobr1 4y ago
    To charitably read and steel-man the GP's comment, one could argue that while undergraduate education is fine - there are better patterns of research - such as industry (bell labs, spaceX, google ml research), or government (oak ridge, NASA center). That the mixed mission between doing research and teaching at the same time in a T1 research university doesn't work as well as more formally separating those functions. I'm pretty sure I don't agree with the above ^, it probably discounts the value of grad-school research as an apprenticeship model amongst other drawbacks. But it does have some merit to bear consideration. Surely the current model isn't perfect - where could we improve?
- hdhdhsjsbdh 4y ago
  > Elon Musk has moved the needle much more than all of the universities combined it seems like. This is incredibly narrow-sighted. How many of “Elon Musk’s” (really, the people he employs) achievements have been made possible by foundational scientific research funded by public grants and made available to the broader community? I would argue a nontrivial amount. Much of tech entrepreneurship is technology transfer, not foundational. These are all parts of a complex ecosystem and no one piece is solely responsible for moving the needle.
eatonphil 4y ago
Two US research university professors (presumably funded by a US federal agency, NBER) agreeing that the US has the best research universities doesn't seem very independent.
- xxpor 4y ago
  NBER is not a federal agency. It's a non-profit, whose funding is partially from the US gov via grants.
  - eatonphil 4y ago
    Gotcha, thanks for clarifying.
- adamsmith143 4y ago
  Well you can find rankings from across the world: THE, ARWU, QS, Leiden, etc that all show the same thing. US Universities dominate them.
t_mann 4y ago
Frankly, I find the basic premise of this paper - the explanation for US academic excellence lies in resource allocation and management - questionable. I'd be more interested in a theory of political scientists who explain it as a function of political power. Considering that Germany was the world's research powerhouse in the 19th century, I'd like to see the hypothesis 'You can't have the best universities in the world if you start two world wars and lose them' tested as well.
- CrazyStat 4y ago
  Are you suggesting the US should start and lose some world wars in order to test that hypothesis? The things people will do for science!
- juve1996 4y ago
  At this point world war 2 ended almost 80 years ago. Most of the nations have since recovered and are quite rich. Something else is there.
  - t_mann 4y ago
    My point is that it's about political weight, and in that regard Germany is still a long shot from where it was the 19th century. Political power comes into play in two ways: one, the research being done in the US is truly excellent, but secondly, research done outside the US is arguably being underrated. Looking at Germany again, a lot of the cutting-edge work is being done outside universities in places like Max Planck Institutes, which would arguably deserve to be high up in any global ranking. In reality, however, they're not even included in most rankings (eg US News, THE, QS, ARWU) because they don't fit into the university-centric model of how research is being done in the US. The point is simple: if you can impose your standards on others of what it means to excel in any discipline (and that's what I mean by political power), you're much more likely to come out on top in any comparison. And then you can harvest a lot of objective benefits as well from the best people wanting to move to the places that come out on top.
leto_ii 4y ago
Surely the waves of massive European brain drain around WW2 and the fall of communism had something to do with it. It makes perfect sense that there would be compounding benefits to being the safest most powerful polity in human history.
angio 4y ago
In many European countries advanced research is not conducted in universities.
- foepys 4y ago
  A few examples: - Max-Planck-Gesellschaft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck_Society - CERN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN - ITER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER - Nederlandse Organisatie voor Toegepast Natuurwetenschappelijk Onderzoek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands_Organisation_for_Applied_Scientific_Research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands_Organisation_for_A...
Test0129 4y ago
> Combined with sorting dynamics that concentrated talent and resources at some schools—and the emergence of tenure—this enhanced research performance. Something tells me this is only part of the story. Yes, after several wars we took in scientists who subsequently brought new ideas, improved teaching, etc to the country. But this ignores the biggest factor: US universities have tremendous endowments [1]. Having deployable capital that is larger than the GDP of some nations helps not only with the acquisition of the absolute best, but also the maintenance of programs who may not have an obvious path to profit. Moreover US students pay more for their tuition than any other country in the world, further factoring in to the availability of money that can be used for such purposes. Additionally, the US spends the most capital on R&D by the dollar than any other country [2]. In the end, it comes down to money. It doesn't matter if you grow the talent if you can simply purchase the best from where ever it happens to grow. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universit... [2] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/021715/what-country-spends-most-research-and-development.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/021715/what-country...
- Cwizard 4y ago
  How is the comparison to GDP relevant? GDP is the amount of good and services a country produced in a year expressed in some currency. An endowment is an amount of money? Totally different things I would say? But I have seen this type of phrasing a lot in the media. I don’t understand the connection.
  - fezfight 4y ago
    It's about expectations. Most folks expect that the GDP of a country would be a larger number than the endowment of any one thing. It's no deeper than that.
  - gt565k 4y ago
    It's not really a comparison, but more so used to show you the perspective of the university's deep pockets and just how deep they are. If a single university has a bigger endowment than the entire monetary value of produced goods and services of a country for a whole year, it gives you perspective on what that money can do when poured specifically into a single purpose (education, R&D, attracting academic talent, etc)
beefman 4y ago
Throughout history, the leading empire or nation (by GDP) has always had the best universities. Also the best music industry, the best visual arts, etc. Ok, that's just what GDP measures, so it's a bit tautological. (Or is it?) It sure as hell isn't whatever policy these authors determined was most likely out of the 3 or 4 they considered using regression over a time period containing one observation of the dependent variable. (Reading the abstract, it seems the above charactization is even generous.) Hopefully the next great center of research will have higher standards for what is subsidized than we have in the U.S. today.
- anovikov 4y ago
  Not really. Austro-Hungarian Empire was an undisputed leader in music and one of the top in visual arts too, while it's economy was absolutely sucking, and technologies terribly outdated.
  - beefman 4y ago
    You're referring to Vienna. It's broadly part of Europe and narrowly functions as its own city-state. Its intermediate allegiance may be less important. It's long had outsized musical influence but was only the world leader in music during the classical period, roughly 1750-1820. This does not overlap Austria-Hungary. However, I don't know the economic output of the Habsburg monarchy relative to the rest of Europe, so it may still be an exception.
MomoXenosaga 4y ago
Europe in it's infinite wisdom decided to self immolate in two world wars. When the smoke cleared only the US was left standing. It took 30 years for European countries to get back prosperity and some of them never did.
- shimonabi 4y ago
  Well, the wars before that caused the whole science thing to happen in the first place because of military usfulness.
jollybean 4y ago
US spends more on education as a % of GDP than anywhere. Big Private schools with tons of money may actually not be egalitarian but it sure does bring out a lot of hard hitting talent. The US has a large, growing economy, which helps. And the US is very 'open' - both civilly (immigration) and culturally (association). Most nations don't have a lot of immigration and Europe, though very nice to it's immigrants, mostly has 'closed' cultures - even in Nordic countries and on the Continent. The French are ideologically egaalitarian but socially extremely closed. And then 2 massive wars in Europe to give the US the top spot, which, without some kind of disruption, is theirs to keep. I don't see China taking the lead even as they start to graduate a zillion engineers and improve a lot otherwise. Especially with Xi's new authoritarianism. European research is also distributed a bit differently which makes it harder to compare.
- wing-_-nuts 4y ago
  Could you expand on what it means to be culturally open or closed? Like, what's the 'lived experience' in both?
  - jollybean 4y ago
    Civil things are laws, workplace, how you treat strangers in public and in professional settings. Social things are culture, friends, etc. and obviously they overlap. Europe is generally good to immigrants. They have nice laws, egalitarian policies, corporations that try to look beyond just hiring locals. Etc. etc.. But it's much harder for immigrants in Europe to 'fit in', to make friends, to participate in all the 3rd space stuff, to 'get the jokes', which means being invited to the 'thing', maybe it's a business thing, maybe not quite looked at for promotion etc.. And a lot of business is still done through social networks, a 'guy who knows a guy', from 'introductions'. I wouldn't say downright 'nepotism' but the Uncle who works at the Space Agency who puts his nephews name in for an internship etc.. So it's like 'marginalization by being an outsider' as opposed to any kind of negative or oppressive actions by the in group. (I'm not denying racism or whatever, just saying most things are not really overt, and it's more about people 'self selecting' people 'like them' as opposed to specifically disliking others). The US is decidedly more open, they care a lot less where you come from and have more aggressive policies and actions at least in some places. Partially driven by ideology, partly just be greed (i.e. aggressively want the best talent), partly because there is less of a rooted culture. France is very French. California doesn't have an established culture. There's no such thing as a 'Californian' by culture, just residence. If you grow up in france for 30 years, you spend the rest of your life saying "I'm French" because culturally, you are. But if you grow up in Cali and move to Florida, you don't go around saying "I'm Californian". Though you might say "From California" but that has a different meaning. Cali is more or less just a 'place'. Obviously it has hints of culture and obvious not everyone is treated 'equally' but it's fairly open. Academia on the whole is generally more open I'd say but still, all the other things, i.e. grants, awards, tenure, etc. are going to be different.
abadger9 4y ago
I've wished at least 2 dozen times over the last decade that the nordics had better research universities. I spent a portion of my life in Finland and the quality of life is so much better there, I would say it's probably unattainable here (the reduced crime, the affordability of everything, lack of homelessness, a more well educated population, etc.). Unfortunately the research being done at the top universities there in the hard sciences are rudimentary compared to resources available here. I was quite interested in pursing a PhD in chemistry there, but the research labs I checked out had resources less than and not comparable to the undergraduate labs I had here.
- silvestrov 4y ago
  Problem in Denmark is that every small town wants their own university. You can't have 5 research universities in a country of 5 million people.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - inglor_cz 4y ago
    The same trend can be observed in Czechia. The EU seems to be rather obsessed with achieving an end state where a huge proportion of people (like 50 per cent?) have a degree, but this necessary leads to dumbing down of the curriculum and emergence of mediocre colleges. We already have people with bachelor degree who can barely write gramatically correct Czech, even though they are natives.
    - Noted 4y ago
      In Czechia is there not a difference between research and teaching institutions? In the US we have things like community colleges and other colleges/universities where you can get your associates or bachelors, but not Masters / PhD. They have a focus on teaching their students, rather than doing research. Although maybe that's what you're considering "mediocre colleges"
  - t_mann 4y ago
Qem 4y ago
1) Hitler did a favor to US, starting an idiotic xenophobic/racist campaign in Europe, causing bright scientists to flee in droves to seed US research institutions; 2) Once the British empire and later US became economic powerhouses, English became the de facto research language, what gave English-speaking researchers home turf advantage in access the research literature; 3) The budgetary constraints to universities are softened when they are backed by a government able to print the global trade currency.
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  > starting an idiotic xenophobic/racist campaign in Europe Today, Asians are fighting for equality in US educational system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v._President_and_Fellows_of_Harvard_College https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v... This is most likely going to lead to striking down Affirmative Action. I suggest leaving emotions out of this and read the actual case materials. There is a lot of intellectual discourse, nuance and vigorious debate in those materials as well as amicus briefs. I love reading high profile lawsuits and this is one of them.
  - csa 4y ago
    > Today, Asians are fighting for equality in US educational system You seem to have read the details of the case, yet you say that Asian Americans are fighting for equality by citing a case that has determined at the lower level and appellate court that no systemic discrimination occurred. Please don’t extend this meme… Asian Americans are doing just fine in admissions across the board at US institutions. 1. The appellate judge has confirmed the lower court ruling that no quota-based discrimination was found. 2. Even if true (it’s not), it is only at a some (10-20?) elite universities. It is definitely not systemic. 3. Harvard undergrad population is ~26% Asian American. US population is ~6%. This is not a perfect comparison for discrimination, but it hardly reeks of xenophobia (not really relevant for Asian Americans in the US) or racism. 4. The only reason this argument has any potential merit is because Asian Americans have higher average grades and SAT scores than the rest of the admitted population. This would indicate discrimination if those were the only admissions factors, but they are not (at Harvard, I believe SAT and grades would be part of one factor out of five that includes things like sports, and this is similar at several other elite schools). 5. Note that the “students for fair admissions” are hoping that the Supreme Court overturns the appellate court decision and thereby possibly ending affirmative action. Basically, their case is encouraging less overall diversity at elite schools for theoretical benefits to Asian Americans (note that imho it will backfire in a number of ways… look at what has happened to Stuyvesant and Berkeley for examples). Grades and SAT scores are easy to understand for everyone. Furthermore, for kids whose parents came from East Asia, where entrance to elite universities is (for most entrants) exclusively exam-based, this is a very unintuitive system. The logic that some folks hold (both Asian Americans and non-Asian Americans) is that perfect grades and perfect SATs should get you into the best school, but that’s just not how the admissions systems at these elite schools work. All of these schools talk about how they want a well-rounded student body, and the admissions materials make it clear that they are looking for a wider range of students beyond bookish brainiacs. I will add that if an applicant wants to get into an elite school based on academics, then grades and SATs are not enough to catch the attention of the admission committee — great grades and SATs alone only make an applicant look similar to thousands of other applicants. Anyway, I wish the best of luck to anyone applying to an elite school. But if they do, I hope that they focus their application on something other than grades and SATs — they will have a tough time getting in otherwise.
_yb2s 4y ago
As a US academic at a prestigious institution, I find it surprising how few of my close colleagues and collaborators are US born- a very small percentage (maybe 10-20%?). In some sense it makes sense that if our institutions are best, the globally best researchers would all come here. If it were a true meritocracy, I guess we would expect ~4-5% of US academics to be US born, given that it's our percentage of the world population, but in practice there are huge obstacles for foreigners to come and work here and succeed.
- ideamotor 4y ago
  We don’t live in a meritocracy even just in our own country. It’s a myth that is used to justify bad behavior.
  - Enginerrrd 4y ago
    We also don't live in the antithesis of a meritocracy either. Competency is usually rewarded, and rewards are pretty well correlated with competency. There's plenty of room in the tails one can cite to justifyany opinion on the matter, but on average I think we're far more meritocratic than not.
    - anonporridge 4y ago
      On the scale of nepotism<->meritocracy, the US is probably much closer to meritocracy than most human societies have been. Are there examples of societies who have done meritocracy better, from which we can take ideas to improve our own system?
      - asabjorn 4y ago
        Do you think this remains true with DIE and affirmative action being implemented in all major employers, universities and institutions? It is not fashionable to point to the unmeritocratic treatment of Asians and white males, so I guess I will point out the emperors nakedness. Hiring people of all backgrounds that agree with a forced marxist outcome (diversity), firing people dissenting to Marxist forced outcome or shutting them up (inclusion), and a forced marxist outcome (equity) never lead to meritocracy in other places. Why would it here? Likewise, affirmative action in hiring and research grants favor a less productive woman or a less competent person with the right identity category. Affirmative action categories are from the 60s when the US had a very different demographic, and whom held high status office jobs looked very different.
temptemptemp111 4y ago
qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
Protestant readyness to suffer as a martyr for a imagined supressed cause, same is to be expected from iranian universities and israeli universities. Subversive society streaks exist. Problems often can not be brute forced economically or within a given reference framework, so its interesting having people who "go around the problem" without gaming the system in total. So you want a punk mentality, but not a wallstreet trader to produce real value.
photochemsyn 4y ago
Full text pdf here: https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.35.1.185 https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.35.1.185 It seems to be more about the development of the American university system during the 20th century rather than the current status of research in American academics (which is highly corporatized these days, with attendent quality and openness issues). Also, the average quality of American universities isn't very high, from the paper: > "The American system is well suited to producing top schools, although at the cost of inequality. To illustrate, del Corral (2020) compares the performance of Spain and the United States in a recent Academic Ranking of World Universities list often known as the “Shanghai ranking”... The United States accounts for 40 of the top 100 universities; Spain for 0. On the other hand, 83 percent of public Spanish universities (delivering in-person instruction) appear somewhere in the ranking that only 23 percent of their American counterparts do."
frozencell 4y ago
Because the U.S. have the best war budgets. /j
anon291 4y ago
I'll say something few will mention... but lack of a safety net is a large factor in why the US has the best research universities, and well -- the best everything [1] Simply put the fact that you can slip to a pretty low bottom in the US (as opposed to the guaranteed safety net in some other countries) motivates those individuals capable of high achievement to produce the best research. This is why the US has basically the biggest companies, the best researchers, the most dominant pop-culture, etc. Basically, everyone knows that if you don't continue to pursue whatever it is, you can sink to the bottom, and there's not as strong a safety net. It's also the source of America's constant 'self-improvement' and 'self-help' culture [2]. When people have a guarantee of a good life no matter what, they get complacent. My explanation also explains why some of the most successful people come from such low backgrounds. For example, successful businessmen like Larry Ellison had some pretty tough childhoods. This makes sense, since those who've experienced such lows will naturally be more afraid of going back than for those for whom it's a more abstract concept. As another example, this is why Arab countries have much higher rates of females in STEM, than more progressive countries. Simply put, the women know that a STEM degree is a ticket to a better life somewhere else, rather than staying in their own country. [1] The US also has some of the worst outcomes. The distributions are much wider in the US than other countries in many aspects of life -- income, access to healthcare, education, etc. [2] and yes these two things feed off each other EDIT: Why downvote when you can engage? It's really quite strange in the modern day when you can have a musing, and instead of supposedly intellectually curious people engaging, you're just downvoted.
- f154hfds 4y ago
  I don't know why no one disagreeing with you will engage. Human ingenuity is forged in fire. You don't build muscle without discomfort. You can't have children without sacrifice. I personally don't think the lack of a welfare state is a huge factor in American universities (I tend to think immigration is a much bigger factor), partially because the US has a huge safety net and every year it grows [1]. Philosophically this is a tough one: take away the welfare state and you remove the floor of human suffering. Add the welfare state and you remove the drive to succeed (from most individuals, there will always be some who disregard all contrary incentives). [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-to-announce-student-loan-forgiveness-plan-11661331600 https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-to-announce-student-loan-...
beckman466 4y ago
"a set of intellectual property rights [is] explicitly designed to favour corporations. This system — the flip side of globalisation — is propagated by various trade agreements and global institutions at the behest of the nation states who benefit from it the most. It’s no accident that Silicon Valley is a uniquely American phenomenon; not only does it owe its success to the United States’ exceptionally high defence spending — the source of its research funding and foundational technological breakthroughs — that very military might is itself what implicitly secures the intellectual property regime."
Kurtose 4y ago
Why does the Premier League have the best football players? Ranking universities by operating revenue will result in a rather good approximation of the Times Higher Education World University Ranking.
tpoacher 4y ago
It doesnt. Bulverism would like to have a word with you.
codethief 4y ago
> Why Does the U.S. Have the Best Research Universities? Does it? What does "best" mean? If you look at any particular field in the sciences I am sure you will find several universities outside the U.S. with renowned/leading researchers from that field. (At least that's been the case in every field I've been in.) The U.S. as a whole simply tends to have more researchers and participate in more fields than any other single country. But that's largely a matter of allocating resources, of which the U.S. and its universities obviously have plenty (more than any other country) for numerous reasons. But it doesn't say anything about the quality of the individual research being conducted.

68 points by ilarum 4y ago

US government funding of university research and operations is a very important factor. In 2018, almost $150 billion USD in total was invested in universities. https://datalab.usaspending.gov/colleges-and-universities/ https://datalab.usaspending.gov/colleges-and-universities/ https://www.science.org/content/article/pandemic-pounds-us-universities-federal-support-helps-their-labs-stay-afloat https://www.science.org/content/article/pandemic-pounds-us-u...

tnel77 4y ago
I’m told that we don’t spend anything on education so this must be false.
- dekhn 4y ago
  The US chronically underfunds pre-college education. Universities are typically flush with money coming from grants usually from the government but also rich people. Often a large fraction of the grant money a professor obtains is siphoned off to dean's lush funds which help support education, hiring top professors, etc.
  - streptomycin 4y ago
    > The US chronically underfunds pre-college education Not true, US spends more on pre-college education than nearly any other country https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp...
    - dekhn 4y ago
      yes, but that spend isn't well distributed, and things are more expensive in the US (I assume your nubers are not corrected for the price index of each country).
      - streptomycin 4y ago
        That's true, but generally the worst school districts are the ones that get the most money, although the exact way money is distributed varies by region. For instance, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbott_district https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbott_district describes how NJ gives tons of money to schools in poor areas, although it does not seem to have produced any better educational outcomes.
        juve1996 4y ago
        Does "get the most money" equate to "has the most money?"
        streptomycin 4y ago
        Not sure what the difference is. But it does seem that no matter how much money you throw at a problem with no measurable impact, there will always be people claiming just a little bit more is needed because this time something will be different and it won't be squandered.
        juve1996 4y ago
        We have very clear evidence money solves a lot of problems. Why doesn't it work here? It works everywhere else in our capitalist economy. In any case the difference is quite clear. If a school in a rich suburb doesn't get much federal money than, say, a inner city school, that gets a lot. That rich suburb already has money. They obviously wouldn't get further funding - but are likely much richer?
        streptomycin 4y ago
        The numbers I cited before were total $ per pupil from all sources.
        juve1996 4y ago
  - suchow 4y ago
    It’s rare for a large fraction of grant money to be siphoned to a Dean’s discretionary fund. Typically some smallish fraction (maybe 10%, often significantly less) of indirect costs (which, depending on the funder and the negotiated F&A rate may be anywhere from 0% or nearly 100% on top of the direct costs that fund the research staff and materials, etc.) goes back to the subdivision overseen by that Dean to do with as they please. Everywhere I’ve worked, that amounts to a few (low single digit) percent of total costs being used in the way you describe. And many places return none of indirects to the unit overseeing the PI and so then it’s a cool zero percent.
  - jschveibinz 4y ago
    TL;DR In the US, primary education is a local matter An interesting note here is that in the US, federal government dollars are not a major funding component of primary education (k-12). Less than 8% (around $60 billion) of the total cost comes from the federal government; the rest comes from state and local property taxes. https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statistics https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statisti... https://www.pgpf.org/budget-basics/how-is-k-12-education-funded https://www.pgpf.org/budget-basics/how-is-k-12-education-fun...
  - TMWNN 4y ago
    >The US chronically underfunds pre-college education. As streptomycin said, you are wrong. New York City spends more per student than anywhere else in the US (<https://www.silive.com/news/2019/06/how-much-does-new-york-city-spend-on-each-student.html https://www.silive.com/news/2019/06/how-much-does-new-york-c...>). Baltimore, an incredibly poor and run-down city, spends the third most. #4-6 and #8 are all wealthy suburbs of Washington DC, but their schools are all far better than those of Baltimore or NYC on average, despite Baltimore spending slightly more per student and NYC spending 60-70% more. Money can only do so much against dysfunctional families immersed in dysfunctional ethno-societal groups.

edmcnulty101 4y ago

I would love an accounting of things that the universities have discovered that have trickled down to the public in the past century. I'm still using essentially the same internal combustion vehicle, phone, and literally everything that I was using decades ago and more or less that my parents were using. My phone is a little better, that's about it. What is this 150 billion of our tax dollars a year getting us? A telescopic photograph of chorizo? Elon Musk has moved the needle much more than all of the universities combined it seems like. We just take for granted that giving money to science is a good investment. I've worked in university science labs and they're extremely inefficient, incompetent, and low labor. One view is that this money is scientific welfare.

projectramo 4y ago
Whom does he hire to help build those cars, rockets and tunnels? Graduates of universities or Oompa Loompas?
- jacobr1 4y ago
  To charitably read and steel-man the GP's comment, one could argue that while undergraduate education is fine - there are better patterns of research - such as industry (bell labs, spaceX, google ml research), or government (oak ridge, NASA center). That the mixed mission between doing research and teaching at the same time in a T1 research university doesn't work as well as more formally separating those functions. I'm pretty sure I don't agree with the above ^, it probably discounts the value of grad-school research as an apprenticeship model amongst other drawbacks. But it does have some merit to bear consideration. Surely the current model isn't perfect - where could we improve?
hdhdhsjsbdh 4y ago
> Elon Musk has moved the needle much more than all of the universities combined it seems like. This is incredibly narrow-sighted. How many of “Elon Musk’s” (really, the people he employs) achievements have been made possible by foundational scientific research funded by public grants and made available to the broader community? I would argue a nontrivial amount. Much of tech entrepreneurship is technology transfer, not foundational. These are all parts of a complex ecosystem and no one piece is solely responsible for moving the needle.

eatonphil 4y ago

Two US research university professors (presumably funded by a US federal agency, NBER) agreeing that the US has the best research universities doesn't seem very independent.

xxpor 4y ago
NBER is not a federal agency. It's a non-profit, whose funding is partially from the US gov via grants.
- eatonphil 4y ago
  Gotcha, thanks for clarifying.
adamsmith143 4y ago
Well you can find rankings from across the world: THE, ARWU, QS, Leiden, etc that all show the same thing. US Universities dominate them.

t_mann 4y ago

Frankly, I find the basic premise of this paper - the explanation for US academic excellence lies in resource allocation and management - questionable. I'd be more interested in a theory of political scientists who explain it as a function of political power. Considering that Germany was the world's research powerhouse in the 19th century, I'd like to see the hypothesis 'You can't have the best universities in the world if you start two world wars and lose them' tested as well.

CrazyStat 4y ago
Are you suggesting the US should start and lose some world wars in order to test that hypothesis? The things people will do for science!
juve1996 4y ago
At this point world war 2 ended almost 80 years ago. Most of the nations have since recovered and are quite rich. Something else is there.
- t_mann 4y ago
  My point is that it's about political weight, and in that regard Germany is still a long shot from where it was the 19th century. Political power comes into play in two ways: one, the research being done in the US is truly excellent, but secondly, research done outside the US is arguably being underrated. Looking at Germany again, a lot of the cutting-edge work is being done outside universities in places like Max Planck Institutes, which would arguably deserve to be high up in any global ranking. In reality, however, they're not even included in most rankings (eg US News, THE, QS, ARWU) because they don't fit into the university-centric model of how research is being done in the US. The point is simple: if you can impose your standards on others of what it means to excel in any discipline (and that's what I mean by political power), you're much more likely to come out on top in any comparison. And then you can harvest a lot of objective benefits as well from the best people wanting to move to the places that come out on top.

leto_ii 4y ago

Surely the waves of massive European brain drain around WW2 and the fall of communism had something to do with it. It makes perfect sense that there would be compounding benefits to being the safest most powerful polity in human history.

angio 4y ago

In many European countries advanced research is not conducted in universities.

foepys 4y ago
A few examples: - Max-Planck-Gesellschaft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck_Society - CERN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN - ITER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER - Nederlandse Organisatie voor Toegepast Natuurwetenschappelijk Onderzoek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands_Organisation_for_Applied_Scientific_Research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands_Organisation_for_A...

Test0129 4y ago

> Combined with sorting dynamics that concentrated talent and resources at some schools—and the emergence of tenure—this enhanced research performance. Something tells me this is only part of the story. Yes, after several wars we took in scientists who subsequently brought new ideas, improved teaching, etc to the country. But this ignores the biggest factor: US universities have tremendous endowments [1]. Having deployable capital that is larger than the GDP of some nations helps not only with the acquisition of the absolute best, but also the maintenance of programs who may not have an obvious path to profit. Moreover US students pay more for their tuition than any other country in the world, further factoring in to the availability of money that can be used for such purposes. Additionally, the US spends the most capital on R&D by the dollar than any other country [2]. In the end, it comes down to money. It doesn't matter if you grow the talent if you can simply purchase the best from where ever it happens to grow. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universit... [2] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/021715/what-country-spends-most-research-and-development.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/021715/what-country...

Cwizard 4y ago
How is the comparison to GDP relevant? GDP is the amount of good and services a country produced in a year expressed in some currency. An endowment is an amount of money? Totally different things I would say? But I have seen this type of phrasing a lot in the media. I don’t understand the connection.
- fezfight 4y ago
  It's about expectations. Most folks expect that the GDP of a country would be a larger number than the endowment of any one thing. It's no deeper than that.
- gt565k 4y ago
  It's not really a comparison, but more so used to show you the perspective of the university's deep pockets and just how deep they are. If a single university has a bigger endowment than the entire monetary value of produced goods and services of a country for a whole year, it gives you perspective on what that money can do when poured specifically into a single purpose (education, R&D, attracting academic talent, etc)

beefman 4y ago

Throughout history, the leading empire or nation (by GDP) has always had the best universities. Also the best music industry, the best visual arts, etc. Ok, that's just what GDP measures, so it's a bit tautological. (Or is it?) It sure as hell isn't whatever policy these authors determined was most likely out of the 3 or 4 they considered using regression over a time period containing one observation of the dependent variable. (Reading the abstract, it seems the above charactization is even generous.) Hopefully the next great center of research will have higher standards for what is subsidized than we have in the U.S. today.

anovikov 4y ago
Not really. Austro-Hungarian Empire was an undisputed leader in music and one of the top in visual arts too, while it's economy was absolutely sucking, and technologies terribly outdated.
- beefman 4y ago
  You're referring to Vienna. It's broadly part of Europe and narrowly functions as its own city-state. Its intermediate allegiance may be less important. It's long had outsized musical influence but was only the world leader in music during the classical period, roughly 1750-1820. This does not overlap Austria-Hungary. However, I don't know the economic output of the Habsburg monarchy relative to the rest of Europe, so it may still be an exception.

MomoXenosaga 4y ago

Europe in it's infinite wisdom decided to self immolate in two world wars. When the smoke cleared only the US was left standing. It took 30 years for European countries to get back prosperity and some of them never did.

shimonabi 4y ago
Well, the wars before that caused the whole science thing to happen in the first place because of military usfulness.

jollybean 4y ago

US spends more on education as a % of GDP than anywhere. Big Private schools with tons of money may actually not be egalitarian but it sure does bring out a lot of hard hitting talent. The US has a large, growing economy, which helps. And the US is very 'open' - both civilly (immigration) and culturally (association). Most nations don't have a lot of immigration and Europe, though very nice to it's immigrants, mostly has 'closed' cultures - even in Nordic countries and on the Continent. The French are ideologically egaalitarian but socially extremely closed. And then 2 massive wars in Europe to give the US the top spot, which, without some kind of disruption, is theirs to keep. I don't see China taking the lead even as they start to graduate a zillion engineers and improve a lot otherwise. Especially with Xi's new authoritarianism. European research is also distributed a bit differently which makes it harder to compare.

wing-_-nuts 4y ago
Could you expand on what it means to be culturally open or closed? Like, what's the 'lived experience' in both?
- jollybean 4y ago
  Civil things are laws, workplace, how you treat strangers in public and in professional settings. Social things are culture, friends, etc. and obviously they overlap. Europe is generally good to immigrants. They have nice laws, egalitarian policies, corporations that try to look beyond just hiring locals. Etc. etc.. But it's much harder for immigrants in Europe to 'fit in', to make friends, to participate in all the 3rd space stuff, to 'get the jokes', which means being invited to the 'thing', maybe it's a business thing, maybe not quite looked at for promotion etc.. And a lot of business is still done through social networks, a 'guy who knows a guy', from 'introductions'. I wouldn't say downright 'nepotism' but the Uncle who works at the Space Agency who puts his nephews name in for an internship etc.. So it's like 'marginalization by being an outsider' as opposed to any kind of negative or oppressive actions by the in group. (I'm not denying racism or whatever, just saying most things are not really overt, and it's more about people 'self selecting' people 'like them' as opposed to specifically disliking others). The US is decidedly more open, they care a lot less where you come from and have more aggressive policies and actions at least in some places. Partially driven by ideology, partly just be greed (i.e. aggressively want the best talent), partly because there is less of a rooted culture. France is very French. California doesn't have an established culture. There's no such thing as a 'Californian' by culture, just residence. If you grow up in france for 30 years, you spend the rest of your life saying "I'm French" because culturally, you are. But if you grow up in Cali and move to Florida, you don't go around saying "I'm Californian". Though you might say "From California" but that has a different meaning. Cali is more or less just a 'place'. Obviously it has hints of culture and obvious not everyone is treated 'equally' but it's fairly open. Academia on the whole is generally more open I'd say but still, all the other things, i.e. grants, awards, tenure, etc. are going to be different.

abadger9 4y ago

I've wished at least 2 dozen times over the last decade that the nordics had better research universities. I spent a portion of my life in Finland and the quality of life is so much better there, I would say it's probably unattainable here (the reduced crime, the affordability of everything, lack of homelessness, a more well educated population, etc.). Unfortunately the research being done at the top universities there in the hard sciences are rudimentary compared to resources available here. I was quite interested in pursing a PhD in chemistry there, but the research labs I checked out had resources less than and not comparable to the undergraduate labs I had here.

silvestrov 4y ago
Problem in Denmark is that every small town wants their own university. You can't have 5 research universities in a country of 5 million people.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  The same trend can be observed in Czechia. The EU seems to be rather obsessed with achieving an end state where a huge proportion of people (like 50 per cent?) have a degree, but this necessary leads to dumbing down of the curriculum and emergence of mediocre colleges. We already have people with bachelor degree who can barely write gramatically correct Czech, even though they are natives.
  - Noted 4y ago
    In Czechia is there not a difference between research and teaching institutions? In the US we have things like community colleges and other colleges/universities where you can get your associates or bachelors, but not Masters / PhD. They have a focus on teaching their students, rather than doing research. Although maybe that's what you're considering "mediocre colleges"
- t_mann 4y ago

Qem 4y ago

1) Hitler did a favor to US, starting an idiotic xenophobic/racist campaign in Europe, causing bright scientists to flee in droves to seed US research institutions; 2) Once the British empire and later US became economic powerhouses, English became the de facto research language, what gave English-speaking researchers home turf advantage in access the research literature; 3) The budgetary constraints to universities are softened when they are backed by a government able to print the global trade currency.

systemvoltage 4y ago
> starting an idiotic xenophobic/racist campaign in Europe Today, Asians are fighting for equality in US educational system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v._President_and_Fellows_of_Harvard_College https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v... This is most likely going to lead to striking down Affirmative Action. I suggest leaving emotions out of this and read the actual case materials. There is a lot of intellectual discourse, nuance and vigorious debate in those materials as well as amicus briefs. I love reading high profile lawsuits and this is one of them.
- csa 4y ago
  > Today, Asians are fighting for equality in US educational system You seem to have read the details of the case, yet you say that Asian Americans are fighting for equality by citing a case that has determined at the lower level and appellate court that no systemic discrimination occurred. Please don’t extend this meme… Asian Americans are doing just fine in admissions across the board at US institutions. 1. The appellate judge has confirmed the lower court ruling that no quota-based discrimination was found. 2. Even if true (it’s not), it is only at a some (10-20?) elite universities. It is definitely not systemic. 3. Harvard undergrad population is ~26% Asian American. US population is ~6%. This is not a perfect comparison for discrimination, but it hardly reeks of xenophobia (not really relevant for Asian Americans in the US) or racism. 4. The only reason this argument has any potential merit is because Asian Americans have higher average grades and SAT scores than the rest of the admitted population. This would indicate discrimination if those were the only admissions factors, but they are not (at Harvard, I believe SAT and grades would be part of one factor out of five that includes things like sports, and this is similar at several other elite schools). 5. Note that the “students for fair admissions” are hoping that the Supreme Court overturns the appellate court decision and thereby possibly ending affirmative action. Basically, their case is encouraging less overall diversity at elite schools for theoretical benefits to Asian Americans (note that imho it will backfire in a number of ways… look at what has happened to Stuyvesant and Berkeley for examples). Grades and SAT scores are easy to understand for everyone. Furthermore, for kids whose parents came from East Asia, where entrance to elite universities is (for most entrants) exclusively exam-based, this is a very unintuitive system. The logic that some folks hold (both Asian Americans and non-Asian Americans) is that perfect grades and perfect SATs should get you into the best school, but that’s just not how the admissions systems at these elite schools work. All of these schools talk about how they want a well-rounded student body, and the admissions materials make it clear that they are looking for a wider range of students beyond bookish brainiacs. I will add that if an applicant wants to get into an elite school based on academics, then grades and SATs are not enough to catch the attention of the admission committee — great grades and SATs alone only make an applicant look similar to thousands of other applicants. Anyway, I wish the best of luck to anyone applying to an elite school. But if they do, I hope that they focus their application on something other than grades and SATs — they will have a tough time getting in otherwise.

_yb2s 4y ago

As a US academic at a prestigious institution, I find it surprising how few of my close colleagues and collaborators are US born- a very small percentage (maybe 10-20%?). In some sense it makes sense that if our institutions are best, the globally best researchers would all come here. If it were a true meritocracy, I guess we would expect ~4-5% of US academics to be US born, given that it's our percentage of the world population, but in practice there are huge obstacles for foreigners to come and work here and succeed.

ideamotor 4y ago
We don’t live in a meritocracy even just in our own country. It’s a myth that is used to justify bad behavior.
- Enginerrrd 4y ago
  We also don't live in the antithesis of a meritocracy either. Competency is usually rewarded, and rewards are pretty well correlated with competency. There's plenty of room in the tails one can cite to justifyany opinion on the matter, but on average I think we're far more meritocratic than not.
  - anonporridge 4y ago
    On the scale of nepotism<->meritocracy, the US is probably much closer to meritocracy than most human societies have been. Are there examples of societies who have done meritocracy better, from which we can take ideas to improve our own system?
    - asabjorn 4y ago
      Do you think this remains true with DIE and affirmative action being implemented in all major employers, universities and institutions? It is not fashionable to point to the unmeritocratic treatment of Asians and white males, so I guess I will point out the emperors nakedness. Hiring people of all backgrounds that agree with a forced marxist outcome (diversity), firing people dissenting to Marxist forced outcome or shutting them up (inclusion), and a forced marxist outcome (equity) never lead to meritocracy in other places. Why would it here? Likewise, affirmative action in hiring and research grants favor a less productive woman or a less competent person with the right identity category. Affirmative action categories are from the 60s when the US had a very different demographic, and whom held high status office jobs looked very different.

temptemptemp111 4y ago

qikInNdOutReply 4y ago

Protestant readyness to suffer as a martyr for a imagined supressed cause, same is to be expected from iranian universities and israeli universities. Subversive society streaks exist. Problems often can not be brute forced economically or within a given reference framework, so its interesting having people who "go around the problem" without gaming the system in total. So you want a punk mentality, but not a wallstreet trader to produce real value.

photochemsyn 4y ago

Full text pdf here: https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.35.1.185 https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.35.1.185 It seems to be more about the development of the American university system during the 20th century rather than the current status of research in American academics (which is highly corporatized these days, with attendent quality and openness issues). Also, the average quality of American universities isn't very high, from the paper: > "The American system is well suited to producing top schools, although at the cost of inequality. To illustrate, del Corral (2020) compares the performance of Spain and the United States in a recent Academic Ranking of World Universities list often known as the “Shanghai ranking”... The United States accounts for 40 of the top 100 universities; Spain for 0. On the other hand, 83 percent of public Spanish universities (delivering in-person instruction) appear somewhere in the ranking that only 23 percent of their American counterparts do."

frozencell 4y ago

Because the U.S. have the best war budgets. /j

anon291 4y ago

I'll say something few will mention... but lack of a safety net is a large factor in why the US has the best research universities, and well -- the best everything [1] Simply put the fact that you can slip to a pretty low bottom in the US (as opposed to the guaranteed safety net in some other countries) motivates those individuals capable of high achievement to produce the best research. This is why the US has basically the biggest companies, the best researchers, the most dominant pop-culture, etc. Basically, everyone knows that if you don't continue to pursue whatever it is, you can sink to the bottom, and there's not as strong a safety net. It's also the source of America's constant 'self-improvement' and 'self-help' culture [2]. When people have a guarantee of a good life no matter what, they get complacent. My explanation also explains why some of the most successful people come from such low backgrounds. For example, successful businessmen like Larry Ellison had some pretty tough childhoods. This makes sense, since those who've experienced such lows will naturally be more afraid of going back than for those for whom it's a more abstract concept. As another example, this is why Arab countries have much higher rates of females in STEM, than more progressive countries. Simply put, the women know that a STEM degree is a ticket to a better life somewhere else, rather than staying in their own country. [1] The US also has some of the worst outcomes. The distributions are much wider in the US than other countries in many aspects of life -- income, access to healthcare, education, etc. [2] and yes these two things feed off each other EDIT: Why downvote when you can engage? It's really quite strange in the modern day when you can have a musing, and instead of supposedly intellectually curious people engaging, you're just downvoted.

f154hfds 4y ago
I don't know why no one disagreeing with you will engage. Human ingenuity is forged in fire. You don't build muscle without discomfort. You can't have children without sacrifice. I personally don't think the lack of a welfare state is a huge factor in American universities (I tend to think immigration is a much bigger factor), partially because the US has a huge safety net and every year it grows [1]. Philosophically this is a tough one: take away the welfare state and you remove the floor of human suffering. Add the welfare state and you remove the drive to succeed (from most individuals, there will always be some who disregard all contrary incentives). [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-to-announce-student-loan-forgiveness-plan-11661331600 https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-to-announce-student-loan-...

beckman466 4y ago

"a set of intellectual property rights [is] explicitly designed to favour corporations. This system — the flip side of globalisation — is propagated by various trade agreements and global institutions at the behest of the nation states who benefit from it the most. It’s no accident that Silicon Valley is a uniquely American phenomenon; not only does it owe its success to the United States’ exceptionally high defence spending — the source of its research funding and foundational technological breakthroughs — that very military might is itself what implicitly secures the intellectual property regime."

Kurtose 4y ago

Why does the Premier League have the best football players? Ranking universities by operating revenue will result in a rather good approximation of the Times Higher Education World University Ranking.

tpoacher 4y ago

It doesnt. Bulverism would like to have a word with you.

codethief 4y ago

> Why Does the U.S. Have the Best Research Universities? Does it? What does "best" mean? If you look at any particular field in the sciences I am sure you will find several universities outside the U.S. with renowned/leading researchers from that field. (At least that's been the case in every field I've been in.) The U.S. as a whole simply tends to have more researchers and participate in more fields than any other single country. But that's largely a matter of allocating resources, of which the U.S. and its universities obviously have plenty (more than any other country) for numerous reasons. But it doesn't say anything about the quality of the individual research being conducted.