Bad News for U.S. Universities–and the U.S.

According to a ranking by the Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands, Chinese colleges take eight out of the top ten spots in the number of scientific and research papers published.  This is a globally-respected ranking.  

In the decade of the 2000s American universities in the top ten included Harvard, the U. of Michigan, UCLA, Johns Hopkins, the U. of Washington, Penn, and Stanford.  While these universities are churning out more studies than in the past, Chinese universities have surged ahead.

Now the top two are Zhejiang U. and Shanghai Jiao Tong U.  Then comes Harvard.  Then six more Chinese universities, with the University of Toronto coming in at number 10.

What has happened?  One word:  Trump.  Fewer foreign students; fewer distinguished foreign professors, financial cutbacks, grant cutbacks, and constant criticism and  political interference.  MADA.

Some info for this post was taken from Mark Arsenault, “If Harvard Is Slipping, It’s Because China Is Soaring,” New York Times, (Jan. 17, 2026), p. A11.

In reference to the post yesterday: The two movies from 1942 that I showed students in my Political Films class were Casablanca and Sullivan’s Travels.  Everybody knows Casablanca.  In Sullivan’s Travels, the character Sullivan wants the studio to make movies with a social conscience.  He thinks it is what America needs.  He goes out to a hobo camp with no money and no I.D. and, through a series of bad adventures, is arrested for murder.  His claims of being a movie star are laughed at, and he is sentenced to a chain gang.  The prisoners are both black and white, and they aid each other under terrible and brutal conditions.  One night a warden allows them a movie, and it is a Disney cartoon.  The prisoners love it and laugh at it, and Sullivan realizes that Americans go to the movies for a good time, not a lecture.  The irony of the film is that the movie also exposes racial prejudice, the poverty of the hobo village, and the cruelty of the prison system.  What a wonderful movie.  (Spoiler alert:  Sullivan does get back to Hollywood at the end.)