[scirob]

no fan if this gov but I always found the university cut if grants designated for specific things too high. In many US universtiies the professors don't get a sallary if they don't bring in grants. And with such a big overhead universiteis sure want it this way. In some Euro universiteis like ETH Zurich or Max Planck instituties the prof's get a pretty good baseline funding from the institutional funding (given top down from taxes) and inside these kind of instutitions the professors have so much more freedom to think about what experiment is the most informative. Also a side note while bot of the named universities are top 10 world wide for research output they don't spend millions on landscaping or sports facilities most things are kinda old but functional.

[seanmcdirmid]

Swiss universities aren’t shabby, they were building a Swiss cheese building at EPFL when I was there. But ya, landscaping was mostly done by goats (really!). American universities are pretty luxurious in comparison.