Great to see the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Cambridge, UK continuing to add to their already outstanding number of Nobel laureate alumni.
The Paris-Sud University was a new name to me. Apparently, this will be the 4th Nobel laureate associated with the university.
French higher education institutions work in very different ways from the standard US model; two relevant caracteristics are: a) good institutions for education and for research might not be the same at all and b) institutions work in a much more networked ways, so many labs will be joint ventures between like 5 universities/schools and 3 national research centres, students might get three degrees with each of them being a joint program between several schools.
I went to a tier 2 state school, no real research to speak of.
Amazing professors, great students to prof ratio, professors were in their offices all the time and happy to see students. The night before final labs were due profs would be up helping students debug problems.
Only 2 courses I took there even had TAs. Work was typically hand graded by professors as soon as you passed the first intro to course, and quite a few of the intro courses were fully taught by professors as well.
Does my school have any good research coming out of it? Not really. Not the point. It has a bunch of professors who are there because they want to teach, and it has a bunch of students who are getting to benefit from those professors.
The Paris-Sud University was a new name to me. Apparently, this will be the 4th Nobel laureate associated with the university.