THE state of a country's educational system is often a mirror of its global competitiveness. The countries with efficient basic education systems and great research universities are also the world's most competitive and most economically formidable, with zero exceptions. For example, it is easy to answer this question. Why is the Netherlands, a country so land-short that it is just about the size of the state of Maryland, the world's second-biggest agricultural exporter, including the best of animal genetics? Because it is supported by the best agricultural school in the world, Wageningen, which beats Cornell, the University of California-Davis and the University of Wisconsin-Madison — and even China Agricultural University — in cutting-edge agricultural and animal health research. The full name? Wageningen University and Research.

We can go to grander and loftier questions. Where did the 'Hungarian Martians,' the most celebrated group of 20th-century geniuses led by Johnny Von Neumann, go to fully explore the seemingly unlimited potentials of their impossible brilliance, and from there, change the face and nature of war and peace forever via the Manhattan Project? To universities in the US, the world's best, a path that Albert Einstein later followed after the Martians' own decamping from the confines of Hungary? From Budapest, mostly to Princeton, to the desert of New Mexico, where they developed the Bomb.