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<p>This is a peculiarly American quirk, nobody else attempts to measure a university’s quality by the number of Nobel laureates it has. The reason American universities do this is obvious, it is good PR and raises the profile of the institution without having to spend any money. A more pressing question is why do American students fall for it?</p>
<p>Having a Nobel laureate in one’s faculty makes zero difference to quality of education and instruction undergraduate students receive. Nor will it have any real effect on the faculty - your assertion that academics are attracted by the presence of laureates is ridiculous. Faculty research interests, position in department and salary - this is what academics care about; they certainly wouldn’t move just to be in a department with a Nobel laureate.</p>
<p>Students do not do high level research as an undergraduate; this is another American higher education myth. What research do they do? What makes it high level? Where is it published and it is peer reviewed? As for recommendation letters, that again is unique only to America so why are you using that to justify truth123’s perverse ranking list (which included three British universities).</p>
<p>How on earth did truth12 come up with this table? He says Cambridge only has nine (the Cambridge website also says that); but if you were to include everyone affiliated with the university like he says he did, the real number is 12. Oxford has 10. LSE has 13. Harvard has 16. Stanford has 13. Princeton only has 2 which weren’t also shared with other universities. And only 6 of Harvard’s 16 Nobel laureates were academic staff. This table is bogus.</p>