<p>Seriously....I geuss one could argue that Oxbridge rivals HPY, but thats all that england has. I just think of random schools that my friends go to, HPYSM, and thats 5 schools that are head and shoulders above all others schools in the world....</p>
<p>how does the USA have SO MANY top universities? I think no other country has top 30 universities like ours</p>
<p>My personal opinion is that the difference is imagination. In America people are encouraged to “think differently” … and “different” is the lone path to innovation. Who does innovation better than the USA? Every country has really smart kids. But how many countries encourage their kids to think outside the box?</p>
<p>We have more schools, but a few other countries have a higher % of 20yrolds enrolled in post high school education than the USA.
( US is #5)
[Proportion</a> of 20 year olds in tertiary education statistics - countries compared - NationMaster](<a href=“http://www.NationMaster.com/graph/edu_pro_of_20_yea_old_in_ter_edu-proportion-20-year-olds-tertiary]Proportion”>http://www.NationMaster.com/graph/edu_pro_of_20_yea_old_in_ter_edu-proportion-20-year-olds-tertiary)</p>
<p>Oxford???</p>
<p>Top American schools are immensely rich, can buy top notch talent from all over the world. How did they get so rich? Well, few countries have the whole culture of giving money to the alma mater; leaving money to schools in your will; endowing chairs; building universities, building libraries and laboratories… you get the drift. </p>
<p>Also, it didn’t hurt that during the 20th century - during perhaps the greatest expansion of the American university system - much of Europe was at war with itself. Hard to build great universities when half your young is either fighting or dead…</p>
<p>A big reason is that America is very large and social mobility has been greatly tied to money over ancestral land or titles. For all the old Yale families I knew, the school would not have survived without attracting bright kids from other backgrounds. Much of that is preservation: they want the money and know they need new money because they can’t count on milking the old. This was even true way before their world expanded to people of different colors and religions. </p>
<p>Other countries have had and many still have systems in which universities are ranked, sometimes bluntly, so getting in x leads to y. </p>
<p>In terms of quality, the US puts a very different emphasis on college than many countries. They emphasize high school education. One of my kids spent a semester of high school at a Chinese high school in China. The basic math class was our AP level, somewhere between AB and BC track with brighter students pushed above BC track. Learning was essentially rote in all subjects but that method means they covered a lot of material. I remember a kid who came to my high school from Romania telling me in 1973 that his high school - in then communist Romania - had much harder math and science. If you look at what’s covered in high schools in Germany or Holland, you can see this is true. </p>
<p>The US makes it up in college.</p>
<p>The ‘best’ schools in the world are what you make of it. Some students go to HYP and graduate with no employment prospects and o.k graduate school choices while others go to lower tier state schools and do outstanding, coming out with top grad school choices and/or great job offers.</p>
<p>^^ I think OP was speaking about the surprisingly large number of internationally renown American universities. He wasn’t discussing perceptions of what makes or doesn’t make a ‘great’ school.</p>
<p>I think faculty quality is relatively better than student quality at top US universities. </p>
<p>Open immigration, good salaries (by global academic standards) and the unifying convenience of the English language are the major factors.</p>
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<p>The US is by far the largest rich country in the world, so it has a lot of universities. It also has relatively decentralized schooling, so that there is a huge variety of public and private universities (i.e. they are not all the same), some of which do become extremely good (although others become extremely bad). It also means that popular universities can become extremely selective, due to the huge population base applying to them, which can allow them to reduce remedial courses and run courses at a faster pace or more in depth (whether or not they actually do so likely varies by department or course). But even the less selective universities often have many brilliant faculty and students “embedded” in them among those who are less brilliant.</p>
<p>Also, don’t discount the fact that the US is one of the few, if only, country that educates ALL students through age 18. Many countries only the top students go to “public schools” as we know them past age 16 and then are moved into their “university” system. At 16 kids are shuffled into the “college” system, which is more like our community college system to learn trades. Then factor in that the US population is HUGE (3rd most populous in the world). The population of all of Europe is 738,199,000, the US alone has 311,591,917.</p>
<p>Don’t forget the business model. Built on a culture where post secondary learning is an expected, I am sure many colleges grew out of the ability to achieve high amounts of cash, often directly or guaranteed from governments. This allowed an inflation in the costs that now encourages young people to obtain mortgage level financing for a piece of paper that has no guaranteed methodology of repayment. In many other nations, higher education is more directly funded and controlled by governments.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The USA is a huge country (big in land mass, big in population). The only bigger countries in area are either relatively poor (China), relatively sparsely populated (Canada), or have large areas that are less suitable for human habitation (Russia).</p></li>
<li><p>The US has been governed continuously as a democratic republic since 1789, so it can claim to be the world’s oldest democracy, with over 200 years (mostly) of relative political stability, freedom and social mobility. Democratic institutions have had a continual need for liberally educated thought-leaders. The USA has been a safe-haven for several waves of immigrants who valued book-learning (Irish escaping the potato famine, European Jews fleeing pogroms and then the Nazis, Chinese seeking greater economic opportunity). </p></li>
<li><p>Many of the country’s early European settlers were religious idealists who founded colleges right and left to ensure a steady supply of educated ministers for relatively small, isolated communities. Later, other institutions (the states, the Catholic church) founded colleges right and left to help assimilate immigrant families, encourage upward mobility, and address the needs of the industrial revolution (which was broader & deeper in this country than in other big, populous countries).</p></li>
<li><p>The 2nd Industrial Revolution made a few civic-minded individuals and families rapidly and extremely rich. John D. Rockefeller, the Carnegies, the Mellons, Leland Stanford, James B. Duke, Ezra Cornell, Johns Hopkins, etc., all thought it was a grand idea to pour millions into founding new universities. </p></li>
<li><p>There has never been a single “national” university in the USA. The federal government has never monopolized the business of higher education in America. </p></li>
<li><p>The American military-industrial complex has poured billions of dollars into research & development, testing & engineering at US universities since WW II.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>when do you think other countries will catch up with the USA’s quality and quantity of top tier universities? top 20-30 or so?</p>
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<p>Not sure that all of the above is entirely true. We do NOT educate everyone to the age 18. We offer a free system of education through high school, but we have a very high percentage of real and virtual dropouts. We do not force anyone (nor care) to attend school to 18.</p>
<p>I am not sure which countries have a “university” system that starts at 16 and offers trade or technical classes. I know some countries have multiple tracks with divisions in 7th and 10th grades. Some of the tracks can be technical (read engineering) or vocational. In addition, many countries rely on an apprentice system for culinary arts or construction. </p>
<p>The above is based on Western Europe; perhaps the quoted text was about Asia.</p>
<p>xiggi–in most states school is compulsory to age 18. There are ways to drop out, yes, but in most other developed nations, that compulsory age is 16. The university systems don’t start at 16, the kids that are tracked to go to the university finish what would be our junior and senior year in high school, then move to the actual University–I was not clear about that. Most of those kids here that drop out while in high school would not have been give the chance to go on past age 16 in most other countries (good or bad).</p>