<p>I didn’t want to get involved in this because the disputation is becoming unseemly.</p>
<p>However let me make the following tangential point: Being a small school, Caltech does have to work harder to attract a large number of star faculty. Since star faculty need a certain number of good colleagues to function, Caltech gambles by choosing to concentrate on a smaller fraction of areas of study. The unevenness in winning Nobels – Sakky’s point about the prewar physics jump – speaks to Caltech’s prescience in picking the “hot” fields. Many of the top schools hire big names after they’ve been well established. Harvard has thousands of faculty and can afford to keep hiring big names in almost all fields all the time.</p>
<p>But Caltech has seen other amazing spurts which show up in other ways and will continue to show up in the Nobel column. The 60s particle theorists are one example. But so was the hiring of Politzer and the support for Schwarz in the 70s. I think the rise of string theory means Schwarz probably wins it in the future. The biology group will probably see more payoff as well.</p>
<p>Even in Econ, I think it was bad judgment that Charlie Plott did not share the Nobel with Vernon Smith as experimental econ received more development at Caltech in the 1970s than at any other school.</p>
<p>Poli sci – which won’t (unless they share in Econ) produce Nobelists – was an example of a great bet. Caltech – along with Rochester and Wash U – pioneered modern rational choice political economy and cultivated the faculty and students – Ferejohn, Fiorina, Noll, Weingast, Bates, etc. who now play such a large role in the departments of Stanford and Harvard.</p>
<p>This means that it’s not surprising that you get a certain feast and famine syndrome. What is amazing is that the Nobels keep on coming. I remember when people were saying there was a drought of Nobel winning faculty in the 70s and that Tech was resting on its laurels – just before the string of Nobels which included Willie Fowler, Roger Sperry, Marcus, Zewail, Politzer and now Grubbs. </p>
<p>Judging undergrads is even harder because you have nothing except raw test scores and limited research aptitude to draw on. Nonetheless the proportion of hits stays amazingly high. So much so that MIT alums would have to win a few dozen Nobels to match Caltech’s per student productivity.</p>
<p>So, to reinforce Ben’s point. Caltech is unique. It has uniquely high ratios of Nobelists to faculty, grad and undergrad alums. Is that “better”?</p>
<p>Yes, in the narrow sense that the meritocracy seems to pay off, despite its lower prestige in the general population, its lack of social cachet, its lack of professional schools, and its almost brutal academic core and low graduation rate. Yet somehow it continues to do well by any reasonable measure of the output of academic superstars. Moreover, it will probably continue to do well.</p>
<p>The formula is not especially secret, but somehow, most schools don’t want to follow in this path. Given Caltech’s multitudinous disadvantages – which Sakky is quick to emphasize in other posts – it is worth remembering at a happy time like this why many of us feel the <em>pain</em> was worthwhile.</p>