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Why the United States has the best research universities

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Re: Why the United States has the best research universities

#131

Post by oneplane »

ur-whale wrote: post #65
boringg wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> can anyone point me to high profile megacap EU startups Don't waste your time looking, there are none or almost none. EU is simply not geared (anymore) for this type of endeavor to succeed: - finance infrastructure for this is non-existent (VCs are a joke in Europe, both in terms of size and in terms of the type of stuff they invest in) - risk-taking is simply not a cultural value anymore - administrative burdens (…

As someone from the EU, some of your points seem very true, but it's also simply a matter of many people not really having the same goals and requirements.

There is no true independence in any society, apart from autocracy, and externalities always exist.

There doesn't seem to be much value attributed to 'having a lot of money' etc, for a lot of people, having a fulfilling job, family and life is enough, and having the security of knowing that you can get sick and go to the hospital without being bankrupted, or knowing that you will be able to provide for your family directly or indirectly in almost all scenarios makes this whole "I need to be a billionaire to live" notion very non-existent here.

You don't need a VC to be happy, you don't need to create a startup and you don't need to take a lot of risk to create value. This is of course directly related to the social cocoon; and knowing the value of that makes for very little need to take big risks for a chance of making things 'better' (whatever 'better' might be...).

That said, there are a lot of self-bootstrapping businesses that function just fine. They don't go public and mostly don't make more than a couple of millions each year, but it is enough, or better: it is plenty. There is no rat race, you have plenty of vacation, you can travel the world, and if something goes wrong there are buffers to catch you. (but those aren't comfortable enough to just slack off in to and 'do nothing', but that'd be unfulfilling for most people anyawy).

Re: Why the United States has the best research universities

#132

Post by babesh »

User23 wrote: post #11
aborsy wrote: post #2

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 te…

I've noticed EU CS grads are on average much stronger scientifically than US ones. With notable exceptions, the typical US undergraduate curriculum is more of a trade school. That’s fine of course, but definitely not the skillset needed for novel research or even properly applying recent research. Edit: Apparently I’ve struck a nerve. But this has been my experience working and hiring at two of the FAANGs. The teams…

The EU CS grads that make it to the US are stronger than the average US ones. They are also stronger than the average EU ones.

I think that some elite US institutions provide solid CS foundations but the classes that supply this don’t also supply good scientific thinking. I think that the institutions thought that science and engineering requirements would have supplied this. However, that is very hit and miss based on the quality of the professors you happened to take for introductory science courses.

The second tier US schools are definitely trade schools. The professors do at best second tier research. The average student is weaker. Canada appears even more explicitly trade school like than the US with significant portions of schooling devoted to getting industry experience.

Also, the recent rise in compensation has relatively recently tilted even the elite institutions towards being trade schools. A greater and greater percentage of undergraduates at these elite institutions are majoring in CS.

Re: Why the United States has the best research universities

#133

Post by oneplane »

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.

Re: Why the United States has the best research universities

#134

Post by freyir »

oneplane wrote: post #133

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 h…

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.

Re: Why the United States has the best research universities

#135

Post by refurb »

spideymans wrote: post #59
exdsq wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn’t the rise of the US as a superpower mainly came down to financial gains during World War 1?

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 ha…

The US was the biggest economy in the world by the late 1800’s.

Re: Why the United States has the best research universities

#136

Post by throwaway9980 »

rossdavidh wrote: post #117

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 ma…

I think this is also the explanation for American success in the 20th century. The United States as we know it is, like all empires, built on the spoils of war. The United States was able to capture the best and brightest scientists. These people were brought into a system whose structure and demands were dictated by the needs of a growing government and military. This is the fuel that drove American exceptionalism.

Re: Why the United States has the best research universities

#137

Post by jltsiren »

User23 wrote: post #11
aborsy wrote: post #2

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 te…

I've noticed EU CS grads are on average much stronger scientifically than US ones. With notable exceptions, the typical US undergraduate curriculum is more of a trade school. That’s fine of course, but definitely not the skillset needed for novel research or even properly applying recent research. Edit: Apparently I’ve struck a nerve. But this has been my experience working and hiring at two of the FAANGs. The teams…

I can think of a few reasons:

In many European countries, the five-year master's is still seen as the primary undergraduate degree, at least in universities. (There may be other more applied institutes with shorter degrees.) When most students are expected to graduate with a master's instead of bachelor's, the program is likely to be more theoretical.

Elite schools are a foreign concept in many European countries. In such countries, ambitious students motivated by status and success are more likely to pursue a professional degree such as law, medicine, or business. The ones that choose an academic program such as CS are more likely to be motivated by the subject matter itself.

You don't see a representative sample of European graduates. Moving to another country requires huge sacrifices. Most people from wealthy countries are unwilling to make those sacrifices simply to get a better job. Those that do emigrate for work tend to be more career-oriented than the average.

Re: Why the United States has the best research universities

#138

Post by [deleted] »

au8er wrote: post #128
barry-cotter wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The United States trains the best computer graduates ― by far: We find that CS seniors in the United States substantially outperform seniors in China, India, and Russia. The average computer science student in the United States ranks higher than about 80 percent of students tested in China, India, and Russia. Seniors in elite institutions in the United States similarly outperform seniors in elite institutions in Ch…

This is comparison between US and (China, India, and Russia). The original poster was comparing between US and Europe, which this paper does not cover at all. For reference, the title of the paper is "Computer science skills across China, India, Russia, and the United States"

[deleted]

Re: Why the United States has the best research universities

#139

Post by sk5t »

throwaway9980 wrote: post #136
rossdavidh wrote: post #117

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 ma…

I think this is also the explanation for American success in the 20th century. The United States as we know it is, like all empires, built on the spoils of war. The United States was able to capture the best and brightest scientists. These people were brought into a system whose structure and demands were dictated by the needs of a growing government and military. This is the fuel that drove American exceptionalism.

> built on the spoils of war

Negative, you may have confused the US with Rome. The US is the beneficiary of tremendous natural resources, temperate climate across a vast geography, natural isolation from external threats, and mostly very stable governmental structures.

Re: Why the United States has the best research universities

#140

Post by codethief »

bla3 wrote: post #8

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 :)

This.

I hope I won't offend anyone here but there's a story that seems quite appropriate:

When I was still living in the US, an acquaintance of mine once asked me, "So don't you think the United States are the best country in the world?" I was absolutely baffled. Putting aside for a moment that the US clearly did not rank "best" on so many scales, the question (to me, as a European) didn't even make much sense in the first place: What metric are we talking about? And what's the point of comparing countries on an absolute scale in the first place? No matter what metric we choose, it will never convey the full picture.

Sure, I enjoyed living in the US. But I've also come to enjoy living in other countries over the years and I know there are many more that I would absolutely love to live in. In any case, I don't think it would even occur to a European to call their country "the best". Our continent's history is so complicated and riddled with grave mistakes, wars and crimes, that a claim that one country were "better" than the other would just seem… strange. Everyone here knows that their neighboring countries are at least as beautiful as their own and every place and every mentality has its pros and cons.

Anyway, I ended up explaining my POV to said acquantaince and also said that, if he so insists on ranking countries in a such an absolute manner, then we would also have to talk about all those things in the US where there's still… room for improvement. We ended up having a long and fruitful discussion and he started agreeing with me (or so I thought) that the question might not make that much sense after all. Still, after an hour of discussing all this, he goes, in a very matter-of-fact way: "Everything you said is certainly correct. But I still think the US are the best country in the world."

At this point the only explanation I had left was that he must have been brainwashed properly in school, pledging allegiance to the flag and so on.

To the Americans reading this: Where do you think does this sense of "living in the best country in the world" come from? Where did you "learn" it? I'd really be interested in understanding this phenomenon better.

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