American Universities Still Lead The World In Innovation, Impact

Reuters is out with it’s annual list of the world’s most innovative universities.  

The list is interesting in that it’s international and that it measures university outputs such as patents and original published research and impact on commerce – drivers of economic vitality.

That’s interesting on its own. But what’s remarkable is the depth and consistent domination of American universities.

The top five most innovative universities on the planet, according to Reuters, are in the United States. Eight of the top 10 are American. Overall, 46 of the top 100 fly the star spangled banner. Germany, the runner-up, had nine in the top 100. France has eight while Japan, the U.K. and South Korea each have six. America’s most identified economic adversary, China, has four. Again, there are 46 in the U.S.

You could say such a ranking measures things American institutions, cultural frameworks and laws are good at recognizing and protecting. Even so, it says something that while the United States has 46 in the top 100, Australia has none. There are none in Africa. Russia, zero.

For pennant waving purposes, Stanford was tops in innovation, for the fifth consecutive year. MIT, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania and the University of Washington complete the top five – two Ivy League schools and a state school. UNC Chapel Hill, USC (Southern Cal), and Cornell are the other American schools in the top 10 – another Ivy and one more state school.

The most innovative school outside the United States, according to Reuters, is KU Leuven in Belgium. It’s seventh. Other notable placements include the University of Texas system at 11, the California system at 13, Cal Tech at 16, Yale at 20, Duke at 23, Columbia at 28, Princeton at 65 and the University of Florida at 92.

At least 20 of the top 100 most innovative schools are American public schools which speaks to the power and reach of public investment in education, which is even more remarkable in this decade of retreating taxpayer investment in colleges.

The link between public investment and strong, productive universities was noted by Reuters in the drop of Japanese universities on this year’s list. In what could have been a warning to state policy makers here, Reuters wrote, “While Japan has traditionally been a research powerhouse in the Asia Pacific region, its universities rely heavily on government spending, and decades of deflation and economic stagnation have resulted in less money for research and fewer innovations.”

The headline in the Reuters rankings though is the domination of the American players in a climate of increased hostility and skepticism about colleges. It seems that every day someone opines that college in America is not worth it or that college costs too much, that colleges are failing young people, that they’re old, stale, doomed and on the precipice of collapse.

Almost none of that is true and what is partly true is greatly exaggerated and misrepresented. The dust kicked around by those arguments obscures the fact that American colleges are winning and winning big. Moreover, the Reuters list reminds us of two things we overlook when thinking about college in the United States.

First, although going to and finishing college remains the best investment anyone is ever likely to make and pays enormous personal and financial rewards, that’s not the only way to measure the value our colleges provide. In fact, it’s a pretty narrow one.

Colleges and research universities are titans of innovation and discovery. With the possible exception of the government/military, no other source delivers more breakthroughs in science, medicine, technology, engineering or social science. Solar power, the flu vaccine, chemotherapy, seatbelts, lithium-ion batteries and hundreds more innovations have come out of American colleges. Those, in turn, power entire markets and economies, employing millions.  

The second point is that American higher education remains the envy of the world. Partly for its economy and life-changing research, partly for its individual value. Although people usually come here to get it, American education is a high-value export and a visible banner of American global prominence in innovation, science and commerce. This too has exceptional economic, social and political value, provided our political leaders don’t mess it up.  

It’s odd that these outsized returns seldom, if ever, enter the domestic debates we have about college’s return on investment. They should. Impact on global innovation and commerce is not an insignificant field on which to be preeminent, as our colleges are. We’d do well to remember it, celebrate them and push them along instead of picking them apart.