在 ACM競賽中，為什麼美國的公認的電腦名稱校，如 MIT，斯坦福、加州伯克利、卡內基梅隆，表現不如中國和俄羅斯的高校？

知乎上看到的比較好的解釋：

是這樣，我在美國念書，去年的時候我參加regional比賽時我們賽區有些非常出名的電腦學校，但是我們很輕鬆的就把他們秒殺了，還差一點進final。其實這個問題說起來很好解釋，我上大學之後明顯編碼水平下降了， 因為在北美念書你會發現主要做的都是一些開創性的工作，整體教育體系是不贊成學生做大量重複性工作的。在美國主要是培養的你的一種學習和創新的能力，也就是為什麼美國培養了大量的頂級電腦科學家和工程師，但是國內好像除了一些競賽獲獎之外聽不到太多的好訊息了。
另外澄清一個問題，美國人的數學並沒有那麼差，中國人的數學並沒有那麼好。論頂尖學生還是美國本土培養出來的多，無論淨量還是比例都是。中國將近14億人培養出來那幾個稍微強一點的真不能說是什麼功績。

順便說說阿三，要是看阿三的競賽成績其實非常糟糕，但是他們畢竟建立了tata還有Infosys之類非常優秀的軟體公司，而且Google I/O的時候真的覺得阿三講的比老美都多……看過3 idiots這個片子後就明顯感覺到，印度這個國家在改變，尤其是教育理念。反觀我天朝大國的教育，其實這些競賽獎還蠻諷刺的

在一個外國網站上看到的比較好的解釋：

As Robert mentioned, I think the main thing is that the level ofcompetition has increased to an amount of commitment beyond whatmost people are willing to put in. I

was a coach at the ACM ICPC in 2005and heard a similar story about the Shanghai Jiao Tong University teampracticing all day for the entire previous summer. When I was on theCaltech team, the team members weren't decided until a few monthsbefore the contest,
and we only practiced a few hours a month, mainlybecause everyone on the team had other competing demands on theirtime.

In the US, the best students have opportunities to do research withprofessors that will lead to them basically being guaranteed admissioninto a top graduate school,

they have easy access to internships at thetop companies, and they don't have as much to gain by winning. In othercountries, especially with worse economies, there

aren't as many goodalternative ways to spend time, and doing well can significantly increaseeveryone's opportunities. The cultures in those particular countries  alsoreinforce math and science and increase the pool of potentialcontestants.

I think this is mainly true of ICPC - if you look at the IOI (a high school contest) there are a much wider variety of countries represented among the top finishers, though Russia, China, and Poland are still strong there too.