[abelaer]

I find his statements on German culture a bit weird tbh. Especially his claim that Germany does not have good universities. Sure, oxbridge ranks higher for students, but for research, which I think is what he is interested in, French and German institutions rank higher: http://www.researchranking.org/?action=ranking

[orbifold]

CNRS has far more researchers employed than Oxford and they do research exclusively. It would be weird if they didn’t rank higher.

[occamrazor]

CNRS is not comparable to Oxford in any meaningful way. It’s more similar to a funding organization, although it directly employs researchers.

Most CNRS labs are attached to university departments and their researchers teach in standard university courses.

It would be more useful to consider them as parts of the host department.

[barry-cotter]

> Sure, oxbridge ranks higher for students, but for research, which I think is what he is interested in, French and German institutions rank higher

He’s not talking about institutions though. He’s talking about universities.

It’s not like it’s any great mystery why German and French universities don’t rank highly either. For France it’s because all universities bar the grandes écoles have always been of more or less similar selectivity, and given that all professors are civil servants on the same pay scale there’s no way to change that either. You might accidentally get a great department but you’re not going to get a great university that way.

Germany had great universities, universities with world spanning reputations, like Göttingen and Heidelberg. Then after 1968 there was a deliberate policy of leveling, so that every university is more or less of similar quality. It worked. All US Supreme Court justices went to Harvard or Yale. So little prestige attaches to which university you attended in Germany that for several of their Supreme Court justices the specific university they attended isn’t even mentioned on the Supreme Court website.

[abelaer]

Wait what, why do you mention these justices? Surely SC justices must study in the US to learn US law? Why would any of them study in another country in the first place? I would also assume all German Bundesgerichtshof justices would have studied in Germany.

[barry-cotter]

Prestige. In the US or UK different universities have different levels of prestige. In Germany they don’t. These differences in prestige are a function of differing reputations. German universities don’t generally have highly differentiated reputations. There are real universities and there are Fachhochschule and that’s it. The UK has Oxbridge, the other ancient universities, the redbricks, former polytechnics. Alternately Oxbridge, the rest of the Russell Group, all other universities. In Germany, otoh a degree from Saarbrücken is pretty much as good as one from Heidelberg. Prestige is attached to the highest degree you attained, not where you got it.

[stereolambda]

I think he specifically means that in Germany (if it's anything like another European country where I've studied in) you study one subject with a rigid set of classes organized by your department only. If there are some additional courses, like Philosophy for example, they are very general, dumbed down for what they think is suitable for typical student of your department, and most often not taught by the top person the university could offer.

Contrast this with a system where you aren't tied to your department and can go to classes wherever. In practice there are ways around that in Europe, but it's either niche "elite" programs or pushing "special cases" through university bureaucracy. Also, the whole spirit of the system probably increases mental siloization of the departments.

[okl]

The first actual German university on this list is #24, the ones before are research institutes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraunhofer_Society

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Aerospace_Center

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck_Society

[nkmnz]

Most of such institutes are located on a university campus and have close ties to that university, rotating staff and offering research positions to students as working student as well as for their thesis. It’s also common practice to have a joint program for PhD students. Having more heterogenous structures of governance and funding within the scientific community of a city/campus instead of a monopoly of a single university is in fact a strength. It would be even better if it were more heterogeneous in Germany, e.g. by having more companies joining right on the campus. BioNTech’s success is a very good example for this.

[Xylakant]

One fundamental reason for this is that the German law devolves responsibility for education to the states. The federal government is not allowed to influence universities and funding is considered influence. These research institutions are formally not education and thus can receive federal funding. They are, however closely related to universities - using the same facilities, the same personnel, often on-campus or right next to it.

[stefan_]

That's how cutting edge research is organized. Surely no one in the US believes sending their kid to Harvard for a bachelor means any of the work done by PhD candidates somehow majorly transcends onto them?

[zmb_]

When I was a PhD candidate, I was teaching directly what I was doing research on to bachelor and master students. So did my professor.

The research absolutely impacts teaching to a great extent. We are only humans after all, and I don't have a separate brain for teaching and for research. If you separate your best researchers in research institutes, you're going to seriously limit the flow of knowledge to your bachelor and master students. And those students are your future researchers.

[TMWNN]

>I find his statements on German culture a bit weird tbh. Especially his claim that Germany does not have good universities.

Well, Aschenbrenner did go to Columbia for college, so he put his money where his mouth is. Presumably Helmut Kohl's sons—who went to Harvard and MIT for college, and not FU-Berlin or Heidelberg or TU-Munich or ETH Zurich or Oxbridge—agree.

[abelaer]

Haha I mean sure, I'm not saying German unis are the best at all, and there are plenty of reasons to go to other countries, especially if you're German. It's just pretty absurd to say that Germany does not have good unis, and that that's a reflection of a culture that doesn't value excellence. That just seems like a misleading generalisation at best, or his personal frustration at worst. (I'm neither English, American, nor German btw)

[seu]

I agree. I'm not German but have been living here for almost 9 years. Potsdam Institute for Climate Research is probably the world leader on its topic. The University of Kiel is probably one of the best in the world in Marine Studies. Surely there are other examples. International reputation tends to favor english-speaking institutions, and rankings based on publications are skewed towards... publications, which is not necessarily the only way to measure education quality.

Aschenbrenner seems to suffer a little from not feeling accepted in his home country. His argument seems to be mostly that his "elite" intelligence was not properly recognized, so he feels that places who celebrate that/him are better than those who don't.

In general, contemporary German culture does not like taking risks or people who stand out. You can see that in casual conversations with people, in the way their bureaucracy works, in the kinds of things that they promote or not. Outside of Berlin, that it, which as a city itself is a stand-out, where people come from their small village because they felt they don't fit in.

[abelaer]

I definitely agree on small German villages having more of a tall poppy syndrome, but I wonder if it's fair to leave out Berlin (and I guess München, Hamburg and perhaps Köln) in the comparison. To make that comparison fair, you'd also have to leave out Boston, NYC, and Bay Area, which will also leave you with a quite different academic/entrepreneurial culture in the US.

[MandieD]

It is obvious that this guy hasn’t spent any time in the non-urban South or Midwest, but to be fair, a rich German teenager would have no reason to, and would find the logistics a bit challenging even if he was really motivated to learn about life in the non-glitzy parts of the US. Life sucks for boys like him in rural East Texas if they can’t get out quickly. Life would have been kind of crappy for me as a bright, ambitious girl in the rural school district I was in through 5th grade, but I was able to transfer in to the neighboring city school district for middle and high school. High school was a waste of time academically for math and science, but spending a few more years with people who were not all bright, ambitious and/or from stable, middle class families was good for me in the long run.

“… Germany feels poorer than the US.”

Rural Franconia feels richer than East Texas outside the Houston metro area.

Mr. Aschenbrenner's education is incomplete until he works for a year outside of NY/Boston/Bay Area, supporting himself only on that income.

[barry-cotter]

ETH Zürich doesn’t being on that list. It’s by a long distance the most research productive university in the German speaking world.