Why are our universities world renowned but our high school system is not?

[sorghum]

@shawbridge:

@sorghum, I think your description of US versus the UK is off in two dimensions. The US dominates the UK on quantity/quality of research output and quality of graduate education. On the first count, the UK has two very strong schools. The US has many. In the Shanghai ranking (which I just pick because it was the first on my Google search), the US has 8 of the top 10 (Cambridge is 6th and Oxford is tied for 9th) and 16 of the top 20 while the UK has 3 in the top 20. The UK has 5 in the top 50 while the US has 32 of the top 50 (see http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2014.html)/. On quality of graduate education, students come from all of the world to get PhDs in the US not because it is easier – my impression is that D Phil students have fewer courses to take and get on to thesis more quickly but the required one to two years of coursework in the US gives PhD students much broader and deeper training than DPhil students. I think of the D Phil as a PhD lite – if you want a quick degree, get a D Phil but if you want the best training possible, get a PhD. That doesn’t mean that phenomenal people don’t come out of the D Phil programs – they clearly do – but I think the programs provide lesser education.

My comments clearly specified that I was using a population adjusted assessment (USA 316 million, UK 64 million, a five-fold difference. Your own data supports exactly what I said. US 8 in top 10, UK 2; US 16 in top 20, UK 3; US 32 in top 50, UK 5. All as expected.

Students come from all over the world to get a PhD in the UK too. Most UK universities offer a PhD, not a DPhil (which is mainly at Oxford). Although in the UK a DPhil and PhD are the same and there is no sense in trying to pick out DPhil as you have. You can argue as you like about the extra year or two of course work in the US, or the extra year or so research in the UK. But universities in the UK and US happily hire PhD (and "lite"Oxford DPhils) from the other country, judging the specific candidate.

And from objective data on research publication output and quality, on a population adjusted basis, the UK is definitely not worse than the US.

Heck, on a population adjusted basis, the UK even gets more Olympic medals than the US!