Compared with their US equivalents, Europe’s places of higher education are truly the poor relations. The European Union spends 1.3 per cent of its gross domestic product on higher education, against 3.3 per cent of GDP in the US. That translates into an average €8,700 per student in the EU (minus Bulgaria and Romania), versus €36,500 in the US. It also explains why so few European universities match their US peers in terms of high-quality research output.

These and many other sobering details are contained in a new report, “Higher aspirations: An agenda for reforming European universities”, published this month by Bruegel, a Brussels-based think-tank. As the report says: “European growth has been disappointing for the past 30 years, remaining persistently lower than in the United States. There is now much evidence that this situation is closely linked to the state of innovation and higher education in Europe.”

Europe’s performance varies greatly, however, from country to country. Denmark, Sweden, the UK and Switzerland (which is outside the EU) are among the best. Some of the worst are in Italy and Spain, where universities tend to be poorly funded and packed with an average 40,000 students each.

What does the Bruegel report recommend? In a nutshell, more money, more autonomy and more competition. As far as money goes, the report professes to be neutral about whether the extra funding should be public or private or a mix of the two.

But it does point out that a lot more could be done in the area of donations and endowments: “Unleashing the generosity of private donors (individuals, firms or foundations) would constitute a dramatic change for the funding underpinnings of European higher education and research.”

On autonomy, the report says every university in Europe should have legal status, own assets, and have the freedom to hire staff, set their pay and decide their budgets. Excessive government involvement in these processes tends to be correlated with below-average uniiversity performance.

Finally, on competition, the report recommends that significant research funds – for individuals as well as departments – should be allocated competitively at regional, national and EU level.

These ideas aren’t necessarily new, but they still add up to a pretty convincing argument. One wonders if 10 years from now the picture in Europe will be any better.