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Comment by spindritf | Hacker News Reader

Firstly, it does, in Scandinavia just like everywhere else. Secondly, it does for a reason. Not just because they can charge (though obviously...), or that teachers/professors would like to eat something every once in a while, but also because getting the results is quite expensive. Take a look at the universities rankings[1] -- how many schools in the top ten aren't British or American?

Before we get all smug about our educational systems largely free of exorbitant fees, arbitrary admissions, and racists nonsense like affirmative action (well, largely), we should take a look at the results Americans are getting. It's not all corruption and waste.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_and_university_ranking... and it doesn't really matter which you choose

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Most "top" universities receive their ranking for the quality of the research they produce, not quality of undergraduate education. There is likely a decent correlation between research output and undergraduate education, which one can determine by looking at schools that have some of the highest achieving undergrads (such as MIT, Harvard, Stanford) and noting that these schools also are major research centers. Note there are most certainly exceptions to this, ie schools without a ton of research output but with great education for undergrads (I'm thinking of Reed College here, but no evidence/just my perception) or universities that don't do much with undergrads but are major research centers.

However, I'd mostly like to address the fallacy of attributing the high international rankings of American universities to the high undergraduate tuition. At Caltech, I've heard many undergrads say that all undergrad tution is about 5% of Caltech's budget, with a lot of the rest coming from various research grants. At schools with less of a research focus and more undergrads, undergrad tuition might make 30% of the budget. I can't find the blog post at the moment, but there was a discussion a few years ago about what would happen if MIT gave a full scholarship to all attending undergrads, and the conclusion was that it would hurt (but not cripple) MIT financially, but appeared possible.

Those same universities have selection criteria which predict success after college independent of the college attended. So it's not like they are masterfully teaching anything; rather, it seems very much like they are simply rebranding the best students.

To the extent that they also teach students more and better, this is actually damaging socially because it sucks secondary educational capital into a few locations. Lower end schools could do more and better if they housed many more bright and ambitious students. But if they're all going to a handful of schools, they're not improving the social networks at Random State.

Although elite universities might not "masterfully teach", the students at these universities still learn more than students at a lot of universities simply because the classes are more difficult (these are generalizations, not the rule). If classes are more difficult/cover more content but aren't taught well enough/not all content covered, then highly ambitious students just end up teaching themselves a lot of the curriculum, but they still know the material of their classes by the end. Essentially, even though the teaching might not be better, I believe an average MIT student studying X comes out more knowledgeable than student from [[ state school ]].

And its an interesting thought to distribute top students. Assuming a fixed quantity of "bright and ambitious" students, wouldn't sending more of them to lower end schools weaken the social networks formed at elite schools and destroy something unique about American education system?

Speaking of which... isn't it kinda wierd that so many in the top 100 are from California [1]?

It makes me wonder why we count campuses as separate in the rankings.

If you have a monolithic system as many universities in Europe do, you'd be penalized for it.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_Ranking_of_World_Univ...

Note that the criteria are weighted heavily towards luminary faculty and not towards student results.

Please. There are thousands of these rankings. They all show different results and most of them are produced by Americans in the first place. To start with how do you qualify a college good or bad? Nobel prize winners, number of sharks graduated, number of Forbes 100 people, scientific articles published? Let all of these alone I just graduated from an high school outside USA and am accepted to those top schools along with my classmates. Everybody knows that US applications are about how good you can memorize SAT words and how well you can look on the paper. I know people who faked hundreds of projects and got into these top schools. Believe me their number far exceeds the number of people who actually deserve to be there. A school with abundant resources attracts high profile customers rather than actual students.

Everybody knows that US applications are about how good you can memorize SAT words and how well you can look on the paper.

That's what it looks like from outside the USA. For US students, the SAT barely matters at all. Top criteria at elite schools are 1. race (don't be Asian-American), 2. sports (especially elite sports like crew), 3. contacts, recommenders, networking, 4. high grades from a well-known high school, 5. extracurricular activities, 6. objective tests.

Try that gauntlet and you'll be pining for tests of SAT words.

For the record: going to university is free in Sweden (and probably the rest of Scandinavia) for the individual, which is the relevant metric here. Obviously someone has to pay, but the cost is not part of the equation when you're making the decision (other than the alternative cost for not working).

You should also consider that the US is a much larger country, and therefore has many more universities up for consideration in these rankings.

You're saying the US is much larger than the rest of the world put together?

I smell some ill-reasoned statistics.

I didn't say that. Listen, if you want me to describe to you how biased these rankings are in favor of Western institutions, I'd be glad to do so. For example, a common metric is number of publications, for which the accepted journals are almost entirely Western (or US-based). And then you have scores that are based partially on (perceived) reputation, for which American schools will always come first. For the QS World University Rankings, this accounts for 40% of their final score.

> I didn't say that.

Sure ya did. Here's how I read it:

Poster: "Take a look at the universities rankings[1] -- how many schools in the top ten aren't British or American?"

You: "the US is a much larger country, and therefore has many more universities"

For such a position to hold water, the US would have to be larger in population than the entire rest of the world.

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