How comes UK universities are best in the world after US ones despite it being a tiny island in comparison?

Question

It always intrigues me everytime when i look at international university rankings and i find U.K universities following closely behind the U.S ones.

U.S in comparison is a massive country with phenomenal amounts of funding and population whereas England is a tiny cog in the wheel so how does it manage to pull off sucha great act?

Answer 1

Actually we in the UK supposedly follow behind the US but cambridge and oxford university degrees are impressive to employers all over the world, you forget that the UK was very fast to develop and we've had time to work at it, we are a valuable US ally, and even though we may be a "Small island" we have the biggest spirit and my national pride couldn't be greater

personally i'd like to point out that many of the smartest men and women of the world graduated from Cambridge :)

and we're not a cog, we are a country and when we pull together there's nothing we can't do :)

We did sorta help with like inventing stuff and discovering stuff you know lol

EDIT: oh and despite less funding i'd be willing to say we've got some of the greatest teachers in the world as well

I totally met stephen hawking the other day in cambridge lol cool wheelchair =]