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Grading Europe’s universities
July 28, 2008
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.
Tony, Strange that you should comment on this report on the day when I read that many university students in the US are too poor to be able to feed themselves.
An Associated Press report tells how, even though such students receive grants, take out loans and work their way through college in part-time jobs, they still find they have to sign up for Food Stamps. More and more students are visiting university, or university-town “pantries”, which give food hand-outs.
How does that tie-in with European universities?
Posted by: Derek Tunnicliffe | July 28th, 2008 at 5:58 pm | Report this commentLet’s be practical,what the EU needs is a massive training program in solar,wind and water turbines,electric cars,geothermal,fusion , hydrogen and methanol fuel-cells and new batteries,from communications and transport technologies to new composite materials and thermoelectric tech. ( how to get electricity from heat, from water, from everything ) we need practical training, from manufacturing to installing , the whole process, because with 1 billion workers raising around the world, what are the EU kids going to do ? sell draperies ,socks and cd’s ? wash cars? stack carton boxes in drugstores and warehouses ? what ? we need to give them the tools, from writing XHTML-MP for mobile phones to building and installing solar panels and turbines and to building and fixing electric motors for cars, that’s where the push must go, but so far, not much !!!
kids from 15 to 20 years old must learn to sell, to run a small business,from fixing bicycles to selling sandwiches, learn to earn an euro, rejection is the best reality check !
it’s true that Universities in the USA are very expensive and the economy is in a hole, these are terrible times for the middle class education,it’s very sad that the USA sends 700 billion dollars a year out for foreign oil and gas and their kids can’t get a decent education…the EU sends out 250 billion aprox. and they also don’t get any cheap education,what a shame !
Europa must give every european a decent job, a decent training , a decent chance, and with coordination, it’s totally possible …. but here in the USA there is no job security ( except in union jobs)you can get fired anytime, and Health Care is very expensive, it’s very different from the EU, very different…
Posted by: blogger | July 28th, 2008 at 8:55 pm | Report this commentMr. Tunnicliffe’s remark about starving American college students is weak. As a recent graduate I can attest that the situation he is describing is almost non-existent.
Yes, we do have a problem with students taking on a significant amount of debt to pay for university (the average recipient of a 4 year bachelor’s degree leaves with around $19,000 in student loan debt; I myself have about $15,000 in federal student loan debt), but the high cost of university education is not leading to famine!
The fact is that the very few students who get themselves into the situation described by Mr. Tunnicliffe have no financial sense to begin with, and many are simply lazy.
Not unlike the idiotic home buyers who took out sub-prime and/or adjustable rate mortgages even though they were eligible for traditional fixed rate mortgages, a number of my fellow students, either out of sheer ignorance or laziness, choose to take out private student loans (at usurious rates) when they could receive federal student loans at much lower fixed interest rates.
If a student works hard and does well in high school there is always a university, somewhere, that will contribute enough financial aid to the student to make their studies affordable. It’s simply a matter of doing the legwork of finding such universities.
And as far as having a part-time job while in university…what exactly is wrong with that? The average undergaduate student in America has 15-20 hours of class a week. And, other than those in the medical or laboratory science fields, few students have more than 5-10 hours of take-home work a week, much of it simply reading. Having a part-time job is not a distraction.
Posted by: Brendan | July 29th, 2008 at 2:25 am | Report this commentI’m not a big fan of sweeping generalisations. They are always really stupid. We have some higher education institutions in Europe that more than measure up. My alma mater, the Stockholm School of Economics (Handels), has a really good master’s degree program (the sivilekonom degree). I had to study really hard there just to get a B, but when I went to Cornell as an exchange student, it was really easy to get an A. At American universities they feed you learning in little bite size portions, getting an A is like taking candy from a big fat american baby (they got really mad when I set the grading curve at an impossibly high level).
European Univeristies suck at research. The problem is that they are loosing the war for talent. Recruiting and managing stars is really tricky when you can only offer public sector wages. I remember when I was leaving Handels. I had several offers from top investment banks and my thesis advisor pulled me aside and asked if I would consider an academic career. I told him that would be throwing away pearls for swine.
Posted by: Stellan Sjögreen, Banker 39 | July 29th, 2008 at 2:04 pm | Report this commentI wonder how useful is an indicator based on euros spent per student in the EU 27. Classic measures of the economic advantages of higher education are usually based on earnings differences between graduates and non-graduates. All these measures make it hard to compare like with like across the EU 27, never mind the US.
I can see how freedom to manage Universities without excessive government interference would lead to more diverse and innovative institutions, able to do more with the resources available. But I am much less convinced of the impact on innovation of “unleashing the generosity of private donors” - unless there is a tax advantage to be had. Giving tax advantages isn’t really private generosity, is it?
The broader question of higher education and growth is correctly identified by blogger - this effort and resource needs to be targetted at wealth creating research and development in energy, communications and transport. It needs to be done in partnership with industry, national governments, and the European Commission on a comprehensive scale.
Individual universities should, of course, be free to go their own way if they wish. But they should at least be informed about the EU Research Framework Programmes and the many joint ventures between the EU, higher education and industry.
Many people dread the European Commission turning its hand to such matters but much unacknowledged change has taken place since the days of Santer. In fact the Commission seems to be getting rather good at this sort of thing.
Posted by: Central Scrutiniser | July 29th, 2008 at 2:10 pm | Report this commentI think the comparison of grading systems between Sweden and USA projects a linear and limited idea of education. Surely the fierce meritocracy of US/Sweden is to be admired along with the research but where Europe and more so Sweden has a long tradition of ‘classical’ education, not confined only to acquisition of skills and knowledge. This is where exactly Europe stands out and should leverage its intrinsic cultural strengths. European industrial training programs are deeply embedded in the social fabric, a vibrant example are the museums attached to German factories, be it cars or electric batteries, becoming an integral part of the lives of young apprentices and engineers, enabling pride in their craftsmanship rather than yearning for white-collar positions. Grading should extend broadly to evaluate the finer cultural skills, manners and grace, refinement, thinking skills of students as well, the way European education used to be. Where are the grandeur of Euro-tours today? We have adventurous backpacking trips to exotic cultural locations!!! Europe also has a wonderful diversity of educational theories from German specialization to English spirit of inquiry to French abstraction. This idea of ‘habitus’ proposed by Pierre Bourdieu should be the cornerstone of European universities. Unfortunately European society discourages a general discourse on any trumpeting of European heritage and culture which is often perceived as ‘exclusionary’ and ‘euro-centric’. Again, here the onslaught on ‘rationality’ is actively undermining the Cartesian thoughts of Europe. The concept of ‘habitus’ in French Grandes Ecoles is under fire for being a construct of the dominant classes. We surely can redesign and broaden the scope of ‘Classical’ European education within a cultural context in the current scenario to be more engaging and inclusive and empowering to the marginalized sections of society. Here I think when we meld science in the cultural context, we do get wonderful instances of high-speed trains, solar panels and medical products. Besides we should also be watchful of ’sheer meritocratic technocracy’ of the US model which can lead to perverse applications of theory (particularly in social sciences) to rationalize social disparity, military conflicts based on the sheer ‘analysis’ of numbers. One need to compare the international relations theories of European academia and the US.
We need to churn in Europe more than intelligent researchers but aware and in tune with the new realities like the need for addressing global warming.
Lastly a provocative remark as being one of those who have been in a highly-ranked European research university in one of the top ranked countries in the Bruegel report; do we really need professors and their research students busy scouring for research funds, discouraging students from entertaining brilliant ideas on the basis of attractiveness for funding, (where we do have very hidden agendas dictating financing of research projects) and a clinical stifling pragmatism thrusted down the throats of impressionable 19year olds?? Is it not more nourishing to be in a campus where the ideas are free-flowing, professors nurturing the young minds, allow the challening oforthodoxies and experimenting the most absurd thought of today but the norm of the future? Iam sure most readers would have made their mind where they wnat to be as young students?
Posted by: Chris | July 31st, 2008 at 3:19 pm | Report this commentThis was the ambience Oxford, Heidelberg, Vienna or Sorbornne a hundred years ago with far less funds and access to technology!!!
While it’s true that US universities have better installations, it’s also true that decent US universities are much more expensive to attend. If the goverment grants went to reducing the price of universities in the US then their installations wouldn’t be so good.
US mentality is that donors want to have nice looking stuff they donate to, they don’t want to donate to individuals.
European mentality is that no one is going to donate because our taxes are already so high, but on the flipside attending university isn’t nearly as expensive.
Difficult to compare and contrast the 2 since both are results of cultures and systems that work in completely different ways.
Posted by: Debtor | August 5th, 2008 at 3:18 pm | Report this commentI think we need to move much beyond the mediocre narrative of ‘European’ being the phenomenon of ‘Welfare states’ and ‘high taxes’. In fact in popular discourse there is a ‘welfare state’ fundamentalism whereas these benefits should free Europeans to contemplate on finer and intellectually richer aspects of life. Particularly we tend to link university performance and funding or academic fees. Why should the free academic courses of European universities not inpsire and stimulate critical inquiry? Thats what exactly these welfare benefits should trigger since we dont have to worry about student loans and course fees. Welfare state is becoming a breeding ground of belligerent populism and most of the ills are associated with it. Why is it so tough for the European policy elite and the society to conjure up visions of a richness and civilizational grandeur of Europe as the basis for its renewal of universities??? Albeit in a more open and inclusive way…one has to look at Switzerland to attest that high funding is not the criteria for world-class research performance. Swiss business schools churn out excellent distinct work on the’German’ business models. The lack of inspiration and enthusiasm is so infectious across European campuses that just looking at infrastructure will not solve the problem. Even in the highly-performing countries like Sweden and UK there is not enough encouragement and motivation to spur new pathbreaking thoughts amongst the students, mostly rewarding standard performance but not provocative thoughts which will stir the academic world. When will we see the emergence of another Kant or Descartes even in the highly-performing universities of Europe or a more-recent Schumpeter????
Posted by: Chris | August 6th, 2008 at 4:28 pm | Report this commentThis extends if I may say so in my modest opinion beyond universities, when Europe is struggling to define its identity, assimilate immigrants it needs all the more to offer an enriched version of European-models steeped in its cultural heritage.
Europa and USA Universities have a test right now : as we all know by now, CPU chip manufacturers like Intel and others are moving to parallel from
sequential computing, this demands new software, new apps., new ideas and new solutions, so will the Universities switch and move forward fast ? with resources ? ahead of the competition ?
bad signs are everywhere: a) FSC ( Fujitsu-Siemens Computers) which makes Pc’s, servers and mainframes and with 100 million dollars in profits a year , is breaking up, Siemens wants out, so will an Asian Co. take this huge EU asset? will Brussels care ? do they know ?
b) some partners are cheap in Iter.org/ ,the vital long term fusion project, the USA is not even paying its full yearly part ( 150 million aprox.) , so will we see a slow down ? are they incompetent ? or just ignorant ? or worst ?
c) Alcatel-Lucent needs european support and direction, with Wi-Fi n and the next gigabits tech. ahead , as well as LTE and WiMax , will it happen ? will they push ?
d) the LiMo Foundation is a vital choice, will the EU and USA Universities be there? ….all in all, these Universities have a test right now.
Posted by: blogger | August 6th, 2008 at 8:05 pm | Report this commentin Europe there are many problems and the education and graduate is very different in Ue country. Other than Us have more opportunities
www.theitalianbanker.blogspot.com
Posted by: janpiero | August 14th, 2008 at 1:44 am | Report this commentEuropeans have yet to understand how important education and science is
Posted by: london | August 19th, 2008 at 11:12 am | Report this commentAlthough I aplaud a critical view of EU higher education it is important to put the US system in perspective. First, it is not necessarily true that spending more of its GDP on higher education means better education or better research. Second, it is a well known fact that US education is extremely expensive, and therefore requires people to pay more to attend and hence commands a much larger share of GDP to produce the same societal benefits.
If we keep using simplistic, overly macro-level comparisons like amount of GDP spent and/or amount of publications, education and research will not improve.
It is also important to point out that the US has not outperformed the EU significantly in economic growth. The US population growth is much larger and therefore requires a growth that is substantially higher. Please use statistics correctly!
Posted by: Robbert | August 20th, 2008 at 9:21 pm | Report this commentIn the globalized world that we are living and competing in I do support the argument of more money input into the academia world - I just would like to emphasize my fear of commercial money (donations) which may lead into less objectivity in research!!!!
Posted by: Milka | August 21st, 2008 at 10:24 am | Report this commentI wish to respond to Mr. Robbert’s blog since you have raised some pertinent and relevant points:
The myth of all HIGHLY-PRICED and EXCELLENT US universities is perpetuated in Europe by both the general and the specialized policy elite discourse.
1.The problem is most of the time in Europe when we talk about US universities we refer to the very top expensive private colleges with sprawling campuses and excellent world-class research facilities. Both are not true; most US universities are not world-class and very expensive. Majority of the American workforce do not study in Yale or Harvard and go on to win Nobel prizes. I wish to take a familiar example of Detroit and there the majority of the workforce for the US automakers are educated, but in community colleges and standard universities. Some of the educational establishments in US which educate part-time working professionals will make us appreciate the European ones given that at that bracket US educational offerings are not great. A very interesting observation I had from the rankings list of world-class universities, the top 20-50 are heavily dominated by the US ones and as one scrolls through the rest of the list one finds the changing contour of more European dominance at the 100-200 and in fact at the 200-300 level its awash with European victory. SO BOTH ARE NOT ENTIRELY REFLECTIVE OF REALITY THAT A BROAD SPECTRUM OF US UNIVERSITIES ARE EXPENSIVE AND EXCELLENT WORLD-CLASS.
2.Here I completely endorse and agree with you Mr. Robbert that spending high amounts of money does not necessarily translate into world-class research and innovative thinking. Switzerland is an oft-quoted example by me which proves the exception that despite relatively modest spending it matches the per capita patents record of US. Even to a large extent UK universities like Oxford and Cambridge (if one leaves out the acrimony over undergraduate admissions) are shinning examples of modest spending, equal access to all irrespective of parental status with good research results. It is possible in most of the European countries to increase the quality of research output without going on a spending binge. By the way most of the research in Europe is conducted in the national research centers like CNRS rather than universities. So the research indices like funding, papers and even Nobel prizes are skewed when measured on the basis of universities. I find this the wrong focus on spending and budgets and in turn triggers a contra-reaction this popular and banal outcry that US universities are expensive so we should maintain our sacred cows of public universities.
3. Why are Europeans so reluctant to accept that we do need a shake-up in the system? Do you know the Swiss universities have strict criteria for passing from the first to the second year? A failed Swiss student will find it very hard to secure a seat elsewhere, and the schools like ETH have the ability to choose their own students. How come ‘breathing techniques’ and ‘therapeutic New Age spirituality’ be funded in public schools with taxpayers money? What happened to the defense of ‘reason’ in European education system? So I appreciate and applaud that you would like to defend the public universities and broad access but surely can accept more meritocracy in selection, gradation and promotion. Sometimes the students are allowed years of study while they are gallivanting around the world, why not limit the number of years to study medicine? French Grandes Ecoles system is also a very vibrant and healthy example of competitive selection and gradation in a state-sponsored system. What is very incredible is their integration of Culture, sophisticated thoughts with education so not just churning our bright smart kids. The products of the French Grandes Ecoles are superb refined thinkers as well. Both France and Switzerland have allowed two-tier university system based on merit and competitive examinations.
So we seriously need the following recipe for the publicly funded university system:
Posted by: Chris | August 25th, 2008 at 7:59 am | Report this commenta. A two-tier system of selection within the state-sponsored system to ensure centers of excellence like the Swiss model of ETH and St. Gallen or the recent German rankings of university system or the French Grandes Ecoles. In an era of fierce globalization we can accommodate a few top-tier elite institutions within a healthy broad-based education system. There is no contradiction and here we ensure that the access to elite education is across the board and not just the rich and privileged few since the elite universities are publicly-funded.
b. More integration of research through the corporations in the university department. Here we find examples in Munich of students working on cutting-edge technology projects with automakers at the Technical university on fuel cells and automation.
c. Strengthening the private-public partnerships in research between national research centers, universities and the corporations, where the direction and strategy is provided by the national research centers with financing and vision of the corporations and the expertise of the academia. Here again in Germany we do find in recent years the private stiftungs/foundations doing some incredible innovative partnerships projects even in areas like integration of immigrants in the schooling system. This is a long tradition with the research institutes enjoying the patronage of rich businessmen in the early 20th century.
But fundamentally we really and very very seriously need a meritocracy and a campus culture which awards ingenious thinking EVEN AT THE PERIL OF manking some unhappy and less cheerful THOSE WHO ARE ORDINARY, MEDIOCRE and REFUSE TO THINK. Once we have this culture of excellence only then any reform will yield results.
I am surprised that no one has mentioned in this forum of a growing culture on European campuses of rewarding mediocre thinking, encouraging hollow and shallow idea under the guise of avant-garde innovation and a kind of assault on Enlightenment rationality. These need not be allowed to damage the system because it is free and funded by tax-payers money. We do not have to be less demanding of performance, excellence and refuse to reward those who are good because we are a democratic and egalitarian society.
At least “poor Americans” ARE getting an education. It appears that those countries that provide “free” education, are the ones doing poorly. Maybe if the students had to pay their own way through school, they wouldn’t get a bunch of slackers who are only there because it’s free and a way to kill time and party. The American University system IS the best in the world, as is just about everything else in the good old United States..(I say that as an American who has lived in Europe for 10 years and can’t wait to get back)
Posted by: DJ | August 28th, 2008 at 9:04 am | Report this comment“Everything else”? I think not. In fact higher education is one of the few remaining areas where the US still excels. In response to an earlier comment, in fact it’s quite affordable because of generous financial-aid programs at all of the leading institutions. So the published cost structure is misleading. As to the excellence of U.S. society overall, I wish I lived in Europe! Be careful DJ, the US is on its way to becoming a banana republic full of fat, ignorant rednecks and third-world refugees. Not necessarily a salutary combination…
Posted by: RICHARD | August 28th, 2008 at 3:11 pm | Report this commentAfter reading the various comments, something that most of us failed to realize is that most of Europe is under social systems and the US is under captilism.
These two systems make a huge difference in how education is handled.
One thing is for sure, there is a difference in work productivity and output among European and US educated people.
If a private company were recruiting for talent and output, I would recommend hiring US educated people.
If a governmental organization were recruiting, I would recommend hiring European educated people.
Posted by: Marsha Jones | August 31st, 2008 at 12:50 pm | Report this comment