Besides professionalising the professions by this separation, top American universities have professionalised the professor.
Ironically, the federal government funds much of our foreign students' work to obtain their degrees in research at top American universities.
American taxpayers are subsidizing the training of tens of thousands of foreign graduate students in sciences, math, engineering and information technology at top American universities.
One reason why it is hard to design and teach such courses is that they cut across the insistence by top American universities that liberal-arts education and professional education should be kept separate, taught in different schools.
Top American universities typically employ hundreds.
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The growth in Harvard's endowment in 2006 was greater than the combined total endowment of all but the top dozen American universities.
However, elite American universities are still strongest with Harvard top for ten subjects and Massachusetts Institute of Technology top for seven.
An experiment designed to test perceptions of affirmative action found that independent observers rated companies significantly lower when they were told the top executives were African-American graduates of prestigious universities, instead of white.
In American universities almost 45% of graduates now get the top grade, compared with 15% in 1960.
This week USP won another plaudit, becoming the only Latin American university to make it into the world's top 200 universities in another much-watched list, published by Times Higher Education, a British specialist weekly.
On top of his wish list are companies like ibm and Genentech and American universities like Stanford (his alma mater), Carnegie Mellon and UC, Berkeley.
Many have noted the increasing stratification of American society and that, unlike in decades past, entry into its top levels now depends largely on graduation from elite universities.
As many of the best and brightest students in the world are studying at American colleges and universities, we must take this as an opportunity to make a long-term investment in the top talent we are educating.
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