Why Does the U.S. Have the Best Research Universities? (2020) • Hacker News Board

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

#21

Post by beefman » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 3:21 PM UTC

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.

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

#22

Post by chasd00 » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 3:22 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #18

hdhdhsjsbdh wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

Nothing from any of Musk’s enterprises has been even slightly innovative, scientifically. He is an industrial technologist, which is fine, but it means he scales up known processes.

I would argue the material science done that enabled the raptor and raptor2 rocket engine (the o2 side pre-burner specifically) was pretty innovative scientifically.

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

#23

Post by MomoXenosaga » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 3:28 PM UTC

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.

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

#24

Post by jollybean » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 3:36 PM UTC

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.

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

#25

Post by nineplay » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 3:38 PM UTC

edmcnulty101 wrote: post #3

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 tel…

"Stanford Solar Car Project was ‘key’ to Tesla’s inception", says Tesla co-founder JB Straubel

https://electrek.co/2016/05/12/tesla-motors-stanford-solar-c...

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

#26

Post by anovikov » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 3:42 PM UTC

beefman wrote: post #21

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…

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.

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

#27

Post by dekhn » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 3:47 PM UTC

tnel77 wrote: post #19

jschveibinz wrote: post #2

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://www.science.org/content/article/pandemic-pounds-us-u...

I’m told that we don’t spend anything on education so this must be false.

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.

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

#28

Post by abadger9 » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 3:47 PM UTC

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.

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

#29

Post by Qem » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 3:49 PM UTC

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.

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

#30

Post by _yb2s » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 3:51 PM UTC

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.