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

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

#41

Post by fezfight »

Cwizard wrote: post #40
Test0129 wrote: post #10

> 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 depl…

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.

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.

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

#42

Post by gt565k »

Cwizard wrote: post #40
Test0129 wrote: post #10

> 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 depl…

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.

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)

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

#43

Post by dekhn »

streptomycin wrote: post #32
dekhn wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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-exp...

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).

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

#44

Post by wutbrodo »

_yb2s wrote: post #30

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 worl…

I don't think even the most Pollyanna-ish perspective claims that there's a global meritocracy. The smashing success of merit-based immigrants in high-income countries is a pretty undeniable signal that we're nowhere near the point where the marginal legal immigrant is less "meritorious" than the pop avg.

I'm personally willing to bite the whole bullet and am an open-borders advocate. But it's a mistake to think that supporters of border restrictions aren't aware that they're explicitly anti-meritocratic.

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

#45

Post by suchow »

dekhn wrote: post #27
tnel77 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

#46

Post by [deleted] »

Cwizard wrote: post #40
Test0129 wrote: post #10

> 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 depl…

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.

[deleted]

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

#47

Post by anonporridge »

Enginerrrd wrote: post #38
ideamotor wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t live in a meritocracy even just in our own country. It’s a myth that is used to justify bad behavior.

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.

On the scale of nepotismmeritocracy, 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?

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

#48

Post by systemvoltage »

Qem wrote: post #29

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…

> 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...

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.

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

#49

Post by jschveibinz »

dekhn wrote: post #27
tnel77 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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-statisti...

https://www.pgpf.org/budget-basics/how-is-k-12-education-fun...

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

#50

Post by elteto »

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…

The irony here is that you’d never be considered for an engineering position at any of his companies without an engineering degree AND a good GPA.
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