Australia, Canada, UK in 2100

[dc_denizen]

a good read on Korea

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...tate-of-matter

Last to speak was Young-hwan Kim, a solid politico with a booming voice, who was the chairman of the Knowledge Economy Committee. A hundred and fifty years ago, Young-hwan Kim said (I was listening to a simultaneous translation through headphones), Koreans had no weapons and were the pawns of other countries. Then, in 1894, some Korean farmers started a revolution, resisting their oppressors with poles and shovels. Now Korea was the builder of many of the ships on the ocean, and Korea was one of the world’s great automakers, and Korea was a leader in the steel industry, and the preëminent supplier of liquid-crystal displays. What was missing? Software. Korea must do better with software. But congratulations, Young-hwan Kim said, Korea is a powerhouse now, and we Koreans will step up to the challenges ahead. After some enthusiastic applause and music, everyone, government officials and engineers and members of the public, trooped back downstairs to the exhibition halls, followed by TV cameras and reporters.

Later, as I had a second helping of curry from the buffet, Hong talked about the differences between Korea, Japan, and the United States. Hong is a pleasant-faced man in his forties who grew up in a suburb of Philadelphia and got his degree from Penn State. “We are very aware of what Japan did wrong, and we are trying to do it differently,” Hong said. “But there are a lot of similarities. For example, at this company profit is not our only motive. It’s also about creating opportunities through growth. The government sets targets each year for how much they’d like the workforce to grow, and we do what we can to accommodate. The Wall Street model, where profit and shareholder interest supersede the rights of the employees—that doesn’t work for everyone. Koreans in general don’t have a problem taking guidance from the government—it’s a factor in our success. I’d like to think that, had this peninsula never been separated, the things we could have done as a nation of seventy million would have been something spectacular.”

Employees were leaving for the day, getting into dozens of buses to go home. A security guard in an aqua-blue suit and white gloves eyed our cab for a moment, but he didn’t tell us to leave. I took a few pictures of the factory buildings—they were blue-and-white behemoths, like something from the glory days of nasa, with catwalks connecting upper floors. The cabdriver gestured toward the buildings and said, “Samsung, LG—Koreans very proud.

but I'm sure Alberta is far more innovative, hey its "grown" more.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I agree Toronto is now the best Canadian university, but that ranking link appears to be silly clickbait, and not really related to the discussion.

It's all subjective, but if you has 100 academics whether Toronto or Michigan were more prestigious overall, I think it would be near-consensus, and, again, Michigan isn't even among the most prestigious universities in the U.S. Places like Princeton, Stanford, Cambridge have global prestige. Essentially the Ivies (and probably only HYPC and maybe Wharton), Oxbridge, Stanford and MIT.

It is not clickbait. It is the authoritative ranking system, of which I have participated in for nearly 20 years. Anyone in the university system knows this ranking system.

[tayser]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Here's the flaw in your "reasoning":

Your understanding of national economies is based on anecdotal observation of things that you deem to be important, but probably aren't in the grander scheme of things, or are based on exaggerated assumptions. In this case, your knowledge of the Korean economy is based on your observation of consumer-facing goods in product areas that you are aware of, like Hyundai cars and Samsung phones.

Not only do these multinationals employ only a fraction of the Korean workforce, but it's possible that much of the "sexy" work (R&D, product development, etc.) may not actually take place in Korea. Samsung has an innovation center in San Jose, and I'm pretty sure those people don't just do back office work for the US operations. Whatever spoils these companies bring back to Korea certainly don't trickle down to the average Korean (cf: the families in the movie "Parasite").

The Canadian and Australian economies may have just as many "technically-rigorous" export industries, but they are involved in making or managing things you'll never see as a consumer, or are involved in things like professional and financial services.

Indeed.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by Greavsie

I would say those countries are about up to 70 million whereas the actual population of the UK is actually undercounted...we have a large diaspora living around the world who flit back and forth and a large transitory population who live here.The big challenge for the UK is the continuing renaissance of the second tier cities which has been happening for sometime.

YOU would say? Because you know better than each of these countries' respective statistics agencies, presumably?

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

It is not clickbait. It is the authoritative ranking system, of which I have participated in for nearly 20 years. Anyone in the university system knows this ranking system.

Crawford, you said University of Toronto wasn't a world class university.

Molson and I corrected you by showing you it is ranked in the top 20 globally, in two seperate lists and you can't simply say:
I stand corrected.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

YOU would say? Because you know better than each of these countries' respective statistics agencies, presumably?

I guess he meant the fact of something like 3-6 million British citizens live abroad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_diaspora

That's the highest number for a developed country.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Wigs

Crawford, you said University of Toronto wasn't a world class university.

No, and you aren't reading. I wrote it wasn't one of the world's top universities, which it isn't. "World-class" is a meaningless term. There are probably 500 universities that could be called "world class" without eliciting laughter.

Originally Posted by Wigs

Molson and I corrected you by showing you it is ranked in the top 20 globally, in two seperate lists and you can't simply say:
I stand corrected.

Cut the silly homerism. It may be in the Top 50 globally, but nowhere near top 20. It wouldn't even be top 20 in the U.S. And no, googling some random list isn't a counter-argument.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

It is not clickbait. It is the authoritative ranking system, of which I have participated in for nearly 20 years. Anyone in the university system knows this ranking system.

Really? There's an "authoritative ranking system" of universities? And this ranking system conveniently answers "what is the ranking of most prestigious universities" even though there's no such indication on the website?

Admit you randomly googled a list. And really any list that doesn't have Harvard at the top isn't to be taken seriously. This list, BTW, has Harvard ranked #5 in the U.S., even though they have the lowest admissions rate and highest yield rate of any university. But don't worry, that global academic powerhouse Iran is well represented.

I also like the fact that their URL makes it seem as if this is a NY Times-associated publication. Also convenient that we have yet another UK-sourced ranking list that has UK institutions absurdly overranked.

[Wigs]

My list was from US News and World Report
9 universities in the top 250 globally

https://www.usnews.com/education/bes...ities/rankings




In case you're too lazy to click my link, Harvard is at the top of this list.
MIT, Stanford, Berkeley and Oxford round out the top 5.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Really? There's an "authoritative ranking system" of universities? And this ranking system conveniently answers "what is the ranking of most prestigious universities" even though there's no such indication on the website?

Admit you randomly googled a list. And really any list that doesn't have Harvard at the top isn't to be taken seriously. This list, BTW, has Harvard ranked #5 in the U.S., even though they have the lowest admissions rate and highest yield rate of any university. But don't worry, that global academic powerhouse Iran is well represented.

I also like the fact that their URL makes it seem as if this is a NY Times-associated publication. Also convenient that we have yet another UK-sourced ranking list that has UK institutions absurdly overranked.

I did not randomly google a list. You deliberately ignored the fact that I am in the university system, at a research intensive university, and therefore I know something about the whole ranking system. You are so quick to pour scorn on people that offer ill-informed opinions. Here, I am somewhat of an expert. Why should anyone take your opinions seriously when you cannot seem to recognize that maybe, in some cases, somebody knows a little bit more about something than you do, based not on what they have read, but what they actually do.

You come across very standoffish on this website. I used to think it might have something to do with inside knowledge. In this case, it is clear that you are wrong, but you haven't the character to admit it.

[Wigs]

Silly Molson, don't you know UWO aka Western University where you teach
is only ranked 276th in the entire world by a highly read US publication 😜

[SIGSEGV]

There are global rankings that rank Michigan above Toronto (e.g. https://www.topuniversities.com/univ...-rankings/2020, which I want to like since my two alma maters are #2 and #1 on this one ), but I would personally put Toronto first. Of course everybody's opinion is going to be colored by their respective field.

[nito]

Originally Posted by The North One

Right but they're nowhere near the size of London, after London the 2nd largest city's population jumps off a cliff while in Canada you have more evenly populated large cities and cities that have carved a place for themselves in the world so they're not obscure like Birmingham or Manchester. Which I feel like contributes to the illusion.

There is certainly a drop-off in population from London, but I’m not sure that I’d call them obscure what with their cultural and sporting reach.

Originally Posted by jtown,man

I don't believe that graph will ever happen. Kabul at 50 million?! HAHAHAHA Has anyone here ever been to Kabul?

Such long-term projections are fraught with problems mentioned earlier in this thread, but the very high fertility rates are certainly in Africa’s favour. I’m working on a few projects across the continent and when you dig down into the data, the growth rates across many countries is completely unprecedented.

As for Kabul, some 4mn people already live there and it is by far the most dominant city in Afghanistan. Whether Kabul reaches 50mn, is anyone’s guess, but there are two developments in its favour that will undoubtedly lend to the city experiencing substantial growth:
- Afghanistan’s population is expanding at 1mn per annum (and growing).
- Less than a quarter of Afghans reside in urban areas.

Originally Posted by Greavsie

I would say those countries are about up to 70 million whereas the actual population of the UK is actually undercounted...

I think it is best to stick with the official data than try to introduce other figures.

Originally Posted by Crawford

I also like the fact that their URL makes it seem as if this is a NY Times-associated publication. Also convenient that we have yet another UK-sourced ranking list that has UK institutions absurdly overranked.

There is an irony of critiquing a list of higher education institutions whilst demonstrating a lack of knowledge that the Times Higher Education has its origins in The Times newspaper which pre-dates the New York Times by 63 years…

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by nito

There is an irony of critiquing a list of higher education institutions whilst demonstrating a lack of knowledge that the Times Higher Education has its origins in The Times newspaper which pre-dates the New York Times by 63 years…

Don't think you understand the meaning of "irony".

The NY Times isn't the English paper of record because it's old. It was actually founded quite late relative to most American papers. The UK's Times isn't a globally prominent publication; the BBC and Guardian are the UK's global news sources. The world's oldest major news source is the Wiener Zeitung, which isn't even prominent in the German-speaking world.

And, yeah, we consistently have these UK-originating lists where the UK is overestimated. London is always the world's financial and business center, even though its banks and corps are mostly European branches of U.S. HQ operations and its overall economy would only be 3rd within the U.S. and 2nd within Europe; Oxbridge is always at the top of university rankings, even though endowment, research output, admissions rates and student yield are nowhere near the U.S. elites, and relatively minor cities like Manchester and Birmingham are consistently ranked above non-British cities with 5x the economic output.

The U.S. is terrible at a lot of things, but any list of top global universities has to have the Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Chicago, Duke, Hopkins and the like at or near the top, and places like Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan not far behind. The top schools have 5% acceptance rates, 70% yields, endowments reaching $20-30 billion, and research output dwarfing foreign peers.

[mhays]

Any university list will be different depending on what they count and how well they count it.

Let's assume they're accurate, which is certainly not agreed upon.

How do you measure quality of education, when the very idea of quality is subjective? Is the best business education one that sets grads up with useful skills for good salaries? Or should it focus on the soft skills? Or ethics and broader thinking? Is quality helping the strongest students excell, or helping the weakest students? Or getting into new thinking vs. proven thinking?

While some of that can be shown statistically, much of it just can't. Rankers limit their scopes to what they can measure.

Further, how much of grads' stats (etc.) should be considered the university's accomplishment, vs. the very different measurables and non-measurables of students coming in?

That said, this thread is probably discounting Canadian universities because we just don't hear much about them. Maybe two foreign universities are broadly known in the US -- Oxford and Cambridge. Otherwise we hear about the Ivy League, the bigger football programs, and maybe the better basketball programs. Even the big research schools don't necessarily get a lot of mass recognition unless they have good teams.

[MolsonExport]

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone with an objective frame of mind that a prosperous country of 38 million would have a top-20 university in its largest city. But objectivity often doesn't count for diddly squat on SSP. There are always the DC_denizens and Crawfords that know everything, ready to put Canada back down in its proper place. You can set your watch to it.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone with an objective frame of mind that a prosperous country of 38 million would have a top-20 university in its largest city. But objectivity often doesn't count for diddly squat on SSP. There are always the DC_denizens and Crawfords that know everything, ready to put Canada back down in its proper place. You can set your watch to it.

Canada has a GDP equivalent to Russia, a country with 146,000,000+ people, but some Americans like to look down upon us as some 2nd rate commonwealth backwater (and Australia too).

Canada will never be as populous, wealthy, or seen as the travel destination the United States is, but Americans, please cut your "little brother" neighboring country some slack that we actually have globally ranked institutions such as universities.
Our many expatriates (including members of my immediate family) help your country become better too.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by mhays

Any university list will be different depending on what they count and how well they count it.

Let's assume they're accurate, which is certainly not agreed upon.

How do you measure quality of education, when the very idea of quality is subjective? Is the best business education one that sets grads up with useful skills for good salaries? Or should it focus on the soft skills? Or ethics and broader thinking? Is quality helping the strongest students excell, or helping the weakest students? Or getting into new thinking vs. proven thinking?

While some of that can be shown statistically, much of it just can't. Rankers limit their scopes to what they can measure.

Further, how much of grads' stats (etc.) should be considered the university's accomplishment, vs. the very different measurables and non-measurables of students coming in?

That said, this thread is probably discounting Canadian universities because we just don't hear much about them. Maybe two foreign universities are broadly known in the US -- Oxford and Cambridge. Otherwise we hear about the Ivy League, the bigger football programs, and maybe the better basketball programs. Even the big research schools don't necessarily get a lot of mass recognition unless they have good teams.

Yeah, people in the US generally don't go to college in Canada so they're just not familiar with them. That said, Canada has done an outstanding job in funding basic research recently, and has an impressive number of research facilities for its size (CHIME, TRIUMF, SNOLAB, Chalk Bluff).

[dc_denizen]

Also perimeter institute

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone with an objective frame of mind that a prosperous country of 38 million would have a top-20 university in its largest city.

Actually, no, that makes no objective sense. Germany has the world's fourth largest economy, and doesn't have a single university as good as Toronto. Even puny Switzerland has better universities than Germany. There are probably 10 British universities better than any German university, even though Germany is presently much richer and more powerful.

University prestige obviously isn't strongly correlated with point-in-time national wealth or population, especially given that university populations are global. It isn't like someone from China decides to attend a Canadian university based on the Canadian population or GDP.