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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)

#51

Post by edmcnulty101 »

jeffbee wrote: post #17
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…

This is one of the most ignorant comments I’ve seen, and I weep for a future where people think that cramming flashlight batteries into cars is as big an achievement as eradicating polio, discovering the structure of dna, developing vaccines that prevent common cancers, creating the whole concept of open source software, or editing genes.

Your comment seems extremely ignorant. Wanting scientists to have accountability with our tax money seems like a valid ask.

> eradicating polio -> almost a century ago 1950s?

> discovering the structure of dna -> almost a century ago 1950s

> developing vaccines that prevent common cancers -> cancer is the second leading cause of death, this hasn't impacted the world significantly and isn't even a treatment except in extremely specific cases.

> creating the whole concept of open source software -> almost half century ago, not even academia, a consortium

> editing genes -> been around 15 years and would love some examples of how it impacted the world significantly pretty much at all

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

#52

Post by wing-_-nuts »

jollybean wrote: post #24

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…

Could you expand on what it means to be culturally open or closed? Like, what's the 'lived experience' in both?

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

#53

Post by foepys »

angio wrote: post #9

In many European countries advanced research is not conducted in universities.

A few examples:

- Max-Planck-Gesellschaft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck_Society

- CERN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN

- ITER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER

- Nederlandse Organisatie voor Toegepast Natuurwetenschappelijk Onderzoek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands_Organisation_for_A...

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

#54

Post by jeffbee »

edmcnulty101 wrote: post #51
jeffbee wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the most ignorant comments I’ve seen, and I weep for a future where people think that cramming flashlight batteries into cars is as big an achievement as eradicating polio, discovering the structure of dna, developing vaccines that prevent common cancers, creating the whole concept of open source software, or editing genes.

Your comment seems extremely ignorant. Wanting scientists to have accountability with our tax money seems like a valid ask. > eradicating polio -> almost a century ago 1950s? > discovering the structure of dna -> almost a century ago 1950s > developing vaccines that prevent common cancers -> cancer is the second leading cause of death, this hasn't impacted the world significantly and isn't even a treatment except in…

The first serial production of battery-electric cars was in 1906.

The HPV vaccine has already cut the rate of cervical cancers by more than 90% in the age groups that have benefitted from the vaccine. If you think savings the lives of thousands of young women is not an impact, you're just reinforcing my opinion of you.

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

#55

Post by edmcnulty101 »

Test0129 wrote: post #12
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…

One might wonder where Elon gets his ideas from. Perhaps he's standing on the shoulders of thousands of man-years of research and development paid for by the American people. You may be surprised to learn how much R&D technology that takes telescopic photographs of chorizo ends up in your pocket as your phone, smartwatch, etc. Elon fetishism has no place in this argument. He's an end user of the system. I am not even…

> One might wonder where Elon gets his ideas from.

Looking at Lithium Ion batteries it looks like the tech was developed at NASA and Exxon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery

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

#56

Post by streptomycin »

dekhn wrote: post #43
streptomycin wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

That's true, but generally the worst school districts are the ones that get the most money, although the exact way money is distributed varies by region. For instance, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbott_district describes how NJ gives tons of money to schools in poor areas, although it does not seem to have produced any better educational outcomes.

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

#57

Post by importantbrian »

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.

Well having a large endowment allows you to have a larger budget and spend more on salaries, research, instruction, etc. For example, Harvard with the largest endowment had ~$5 billion in operating expenses in 2021. That alone is more than the entire GDP of more than 50 countries. So Harvard by itself spent more money than the entire economies of 24% of the worlds countries.

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

#58

Post by dcolkitt »

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…

These are all good points. But what's interesting is that very similar things could also be said about the US healthcare system. And yet unlike American universities, it's not clear that American hospitals or healthcare is worldclass.

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

#59

Post by unmole »

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.

How do you feel about comparing debt to GDP?

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

#60

Post by i_have_an_idea »

_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…

> few of my close colleagues and collaborators are US born- a very small percentage (maybe 10-20%) [..] 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

It's unrelated to meritocracy. It's just that a significant portion of the world population lives under conditions that are too poor to be able to develop extraordinarily smart people in significant quantities that are able to compete with other smart people born in rich countries. In other words, if you are poor, have poor access to sanitation and nutritious food, you'll be at a severe disadvantage to develop the skills needed to be a top researcher.

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