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You may not realize this but because you worked hard for your position you believe you are entitled to it and the system that promoted you is near perfect. The

You may not realize this but because you worked hard for your position you believe you are entitled to it and the system that promoted you is near perfect. The reality is not so. I have been to UC Berkeley, where the average faculty is far more interested in gaming the system than making real contribution to science. They orbit around "famous" people, co-author papers with "big wigs," be co-PI with well connected people, because this way is easier than doing real science. There are top people at the top universities, and there are top people at the lower-tier schools, at a lower rate but with a far greater base population. Scientific breakthroughts historically do not favor top rate institutions. Let's face it. The "top" students that Harvard and Stanford accept are past experts at gaming the system. They are total believer in and are totally committed to climbing the existing social-economic hiearchy. They worship the authorities, are perfectly content in following established lines of research, and pad themselves in the back when they re-search past results to apply to an arcane area, which in all probability ten people are ever going to find interesting and never useful. They are the perfect sheeps pretending to be lions. Talk about entitlement.

ChrisLomont 12y ago
>Scientific breakthroughts historically do not favor top rate institutions. What proof of this do you have? Quick looks over Nobel Prizes, Fields Medals, or even lists of top scientific breakthroughs demonstrate that top rate universities do produce far more scientific breakthroughs than other universities.
- nhstanley 12y ago
  How frequently do those people move to those universities after they've made the scientific breakthrough for which they receive the award?
  - ChrisLomont 12y ago
    For Nobel Prizes, it's abundantly clear that people from and/or working at top schools win them vastly more than small schools by people that were at the school when the work was done. [1] Harvard has around 150. Many of the top schools have around 100. Ohio State, despite being much bigger [2,3], has 4, and is much more in line with most state (right below top tier) schools. If you want to challenge that the top schools have much more productive researchers (and those making significant breakthroughs) on average, feel free to present evidence. Any metric I can find for which I can get enough information implies otherwise. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_university_affiliation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_univ... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University [3] http://www.osu.edu/osutoday/stuinfo.php http://www.osu.edu/osutoday/stuinfo.php

ChrisLomont 12y ago

>Scientific breakthroughts historically do not favor top rate institutions. What proof of this do you have? Quick looks over Nobel Prizes, Fields Medals, or even lists of top scientific breakthroughs demonstrate that top rate universities do produce far more scientific breakthroughs than other universities.

nhstanley 12y ago
How frequently do those people move to those universities after they've made the scientific breakthrough for which they receive the award?
- ChrisLomont 12y ago
  For Nobel Prizes, it's abundantly clear that people from and/or working at top schools win them vastly more than small schools by people that were at the school when the work was done. [1] Harvard has around 150. Many of the top schools have around 100. Ohio State, despite being much bigger [2,3], has 4, and is much more in line with most state (right below top tier) schools. If you want to challenge that the top schools have much more productive researchers (and those making significant breakthroughs) on average, feel free to present evidence. Any metric I can find for which I can get enough information implies otherwise. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_university_affiliation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_univ... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University [3] http://www.osu.edu/osutoday/stuinfo.php http://www.osu.edu/osutoday/stuinfo.php