Universidades

La Opinadora me manda este artículo muy interesante sobre el esfuerzo de Canadá para tener centros de estudio superiores de nivel internacional y todo lo que eso implica. Menos mal que Argentina tenemos a la UBA (AKA Shuberoflandia):

Even the best institutions are rarely among the best at everything. Most institutions are known for their strengths in particular areas (e.g. physical sciences, health sciences or social sciences). Canada has maybe eight universities that are genuinely world-class (meaning that they are incontrovertibly in the top 100 universities globally) in at least one field. Four of these are in Ontario, two in Quebec and one each in Alberta and British Columbia. Of these, only four institutions — McGill University, University of Montreal, University of Alberta and the University of British Columbia — have any genuine claim to being world-class in more than one broad field of study, and a fifth, the University of Toronto, is the only institution which is genuinely world-class across a wide range of fields.

This may sound like a harsh judgment on Canadian universities, but it is not; in fact, compared to other countries our size we do extraordinarily well at producing quality universities. Where Canada has five institutions that produce large amounts of research across a broad range of fields, Australia has only three and Italy has but a single institution.

Creating and sustaining a world-class university is an immensely expensive exercise. Laboratories do not come cheap, and neither do good libraries. Moreover, top researchers are extremely footloose, following high salaries, engaging colleagues, and challenging graduate students from one congenial appointment to another. Indeed, of all the countries in the world, only the United States is able to support more than a dozen of these kinds of universities.