> Combined with sorting dynamics that concentrated talent and resources at some schools—and the emergence of tenure—this enhanced research performance.<p>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.<p>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].<p>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.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universit...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/021715/what-country-spends-most-research-and-development.asp" rel="nofollow">https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/021715/what-country...</a>
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.
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.
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?)<p>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.<p>(Reading the abstract, it seems the above charactization is even generous.)<p>Hopefully the next great center of research will have higher standards for what is subsidized than we have in the U.S. today.
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.<p><a href="https://datalab.usaspending.gov/colleges-and-universities/" rel="nofollow">https://datalab.usaspending.gov/colleges-and-universities/</a><p><a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/pandemic-pounds-us-universities-federal-support-helps-their-labs-stay-afloat" rel="nofollow">https://www.science.org/content/article/pandemic-pounds-us-u...</a>
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.
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.
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.<p>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.<p>European research is also distributed a bit differently which makes it harder to compare.
Full text pdf here:<p><a href="https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.35.1.185" rel="nofollow">https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.35.1.185</a><p>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).<p>Also, the <i>average</i> quality of American universities isn't very high, from the paper:<p>> "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."
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.
> Why Does the U.S. Have the Best Research Universities?<p>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.)<p>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 <i>individual</i> research being conducted.
"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."
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.
Why does the Premier League have the best football players?<p>Ranking universities by operating revenue will result in a rather good approximation of the Times Higher Education World University Ranking.
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;<p>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;<p>3) The budgetary constraints to universities are softened when they are backed by a government able to print the global trade currency.
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]<p>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.<p>It's also the source of America's constant 'self-improvement' and 'self-help' culture [2].<p>When people have a guarantee of a good life no matter what, they get complacent.<p>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.<p>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.<p>[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.<p>[2] and yes these two things feed off each other<p>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.
Protestant readyness to suffer as a martyr for a imagined supressed cause, same is to be expected from iranian universities and israeli universities.<p>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.
I would love an accounting of things that the universities have discovered that have trickled down to the public in the past century.<p>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.<p>What is this 150 billion of our tax dollars a year getting us?<p>A telescopic photograph of chorizo?<p>Elon Musk has moved the needle much more than all of the universities combined it seems like.<p>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.