[t_mann]

Frankly, I find the basic premise of this paper - the explanation for US academic excellence lies in resource allocation and management - questionable. I'd be more interested in a theory of political scientists who explain it as a function of political power. Considering that Germany was the world's research powerhouse in the 19th century, I'd like to see the hypothesis 'You can't have the best universities in the world if you start two world wars and lose them' tested as well.

[CrazyStat]

Are you suggesting the US should start and lose some world wars in order to test that hypothesis?

The things people will do for science!

[juve1996]

At this point world war 2 ended almost 80 years ago. Most of the nations have since recovered and are quite rich. Something else is there.

[t_mann]

My point is that it's about political weight, and in that regard Germany is still a long shot from where it was the 19th century. Political power comes into play in two ways: one, the research being done in the US is truly excellent, but secondly, research done outside the US is arguably being underrated. Looking at Germany again, a lot of the cutting-edge work is being done outside universities in places like Max Planck Institutes, which would arguably deserve to be high up in any global ranking. In reality, however, they're not even included in most rankings (eg US News, THE, QS, ARWU) because they don't fit into the university-centric model of how research is being done in the US.

The point is simple: if you can impose your standards on others of what it means to excel in any discipline (and that's what I mean by political power), you're much more likely to come out on top in any comparison. And then you can harvest a lot of objective benefits as well from the best people wanting to move to the places that come out on top.