How Europe fails its
young Those Europeans who are tempted, in the light of the
dismal scenes in New Orleans this fortnight, to downgrade the American challenge
should meditate on one word: universities. Five years ago in Lisbon European
officials proclaimed their intention to become the world’s premier "knowledge
economy" by 2010. The thinking behind this grand declaration made sense of a
sort: Europe’s only chance of preserving its living standards lies in working
smarter than its competitors rather than harder or cheaper. But Europe’s failing
higher-education system poses a lethal threat to this ambition.
Europe created the modem university. Scholars were gathering in Paris and
Bologna before America was on the map. Oxford and Cambridge invented the
residential university: the idea of a community of scholars, living together to
pursue higher learning. Germany created the research university. A century ago
European universities were a magnet for scholars and a model for academic
administrators the world over. But, as our survey of higher
education explains, since the second world war Europe has progressively
surrendered its lead in higher education to the United States. America boasts 17
of the world’s top 20 universities, according to a widely used global ranking by
the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. American universities currently employ 70% of
the world’s Nobel prize-winners, 30% of the world’s output of articles on
science and engineering, and 44% of the most frequently cited articles. No
wonder developing countries now look to America rather than Europe for a model
for higher education. Why have European universities declined so
precipitously in recent decades And what can be done to restore them to their
former glory The answer to the first question lies in the role of the state.
American universities get their funding from a variety of different sources, not
just government but also philanthropists, businesses and, of course, the
students themselves. European ones are largely state-funded. The constraints on
state funding mean that European governments force universities to "process"
more and more students without giving the TM the necessary cash—and respond to
the universities’ complaints by trying to micromanage them. Inevitably, quality
has eroded. Yet, as the American model shows, people are prepared to pay for
good higher education, because they know they will benefit from it: that’s why
America spends twice as much of its GDP on higher education as Europe
does. The answer to the second question is to set universities
free from the state. Free universities to run their internal affairs: how can
French universities, for example, compete for talent with their American rivals
when professors are civil servants And free them to charge fees for their
services—including, most importantly, student fees. Asia’s
learning The standard European retort is that if people have
to pay for higher education, it will become the monopoly of the rich. But
spending on higher education in Europe is highly regressive (more middle-class
students go to university than working-class ones). And higher education is
hardly a monopoly of the rich in America: a third of undergraduates come from
racial minorities, and about a quarter come from families with incomes below the
poverty line. The government certainly has a responsibility to help students to
borrow against their future incomes. But student fees offer the best chance of
pumping more resources into higher education. They also offer the best chance of
combining equity with excellence. Europe still boasts some of
the world’s best universities, and there are some signs that policy makers have
realised that their system is failing. Britain, the pacemaker in university
reform in Europe, is raising fees. The Germans are trying to create a Teutonic
Ivy League. European universities are aggressively wooing foreign students.
Pan-European plans are encouraging student mobility and forcing the more
eccentric European countries (notably Germany) to reform their degree
structures. But the reforms have been too tentative. America is
not the only competition Europe faces in the knowledge economy. Emerging
countries have cottoned on to the idea of working smarter as well as harder.
Singapore is determined to turn itself into a "knowledge island". India is
sprucing up its institutes of technology. In the past decade China has doubled
the size of its student population while pouring vast resources into elite
universities. Forget about catching up with America; unless Europeans reform
their universities, they will soon be left in the dust by Asia as well. America spends twice as much of its GDP on higher education as Europe does.