Study in the USA

The U.S. is a country of 50 states with 5 percent of the world’s population has generated between 20 and 30 percent of world output for 125 years, and eight of the top ten universities in the world are in the United States. Of the top twenty, seventeen or fifteen are in America; of the top fifty, thirty-seven or twenty-seven. Still, the basic story does not change, and the United States dominates higher education, having either 74 or 54 percent of the world’s top fifty universities (depending which study you look at). In no other field is America’s advantage so overwhelming.

For over three generations, the USA has been the preferred destination for students from all around the world. Undoubtedly American institutions consistently feature in the top Universities in the world.

The USA, with more than one million students,  nearly 5% of all students enrolled in higher-level education are international students, and the numbers are growing. From the mid-1950’s, when international student enrollment was only just reaching 35,000, international education in the USA has come a long way.

The United States invests 2.6 percent of its GDP in higher education, compared with 1.2 percent in Europe and 1.1 percent in Japan. The situation in the sciences is particularly striking.

A list of where the world’s 1,000 best computer scientists were educated, shows that the top ten schools are all American. U.S. spending on R&D remains higher than Europe’s, and its collaborations between business and educational institutions are unmatched anywhere in the world. America remains by far the most attractive destination for students, taking 30 percent of the total number of international students globally. All these advantages will not be erased quickly, because the structure of European and Japanese universities—mostly state-run bureaucracies—is unlikely to change.

Moreover, while China and India are opening new institutions, it is not that easy to create a world-class university out of whole cloth in a few decades. The statistic shows, in India, universities graduate between 35 and 50 Ph.D.’s in computer science each year; in America, the figure is 1,000.

While the American system is too lax on rigor and memorization—whether in math or poetry—it is much better at developing the critical faculties of the mind, which is the necessity to succeed in life. Other educational systems teach to take tests; the American system teaches to think.

It is undoubtedly this quality that goes some way in explaining why America produces so many entrepreneurs, inventors, and risk takers. In America, people are allowed to be bold, challenge authority, fail, and pick themselves up. It is America, not Japan, that produces dozens of Nobel Prize winners. America has a culture of learning that challenges conventional wisdom, even if it means challenging authority