New Report Claims European Universities Second Rate. (June 19, 2006)

    Taking as its starting point the rankings of the world's research universities by the Institute of Higher Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, a pamphlet published by the Centre for European Reform and launched on June 5 by the UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, concludes Europe lags behind America in many subjects - computer science, high technology and economics, to name but three. The Future of European Universities: Renaissance or decay? which throws in many additional statistics to substantiate its case is written by Richard Lambert, former editor of The Financial Times and the next director general of the Confederation of British Industry, and Nick Butler, Group Vice President for Strategy and Policy Development at BP and chairman of the CER.

"These figures tell a grim story for Europe," Lambert and Butler write. "How can it hope to become 'the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world' - when most of its best universities are so clearly in the second division?"

According to The Future of European Universities, among the world's top ten universities, only two are in the EU. Europe's higher education institutions are slow moving and under-funded. While the US is host to dozens of world-class universities, much of Europe's higher education remains unreformed and stuck in the past. If Europe wants to stop falling behind and stem the 'brain drain' across the Atlantic it must act now.

In their CER pamphlet, Lambert and Butler argue that Europe needs to:

1. devote more resources to research;

2.  improve the quality of its teaching;

3. build up centres of excellence;

4. strengthen links between education and business;

5. and give its universities more autonomy.

The authors also examine the role that the European Union can play in improving higher education, for example by establishing the European Research Council.

Lucy Hodges of The Independent reported Lambert and Butler, "would like to see European governments committing themselves to spending two per cent of GDP on their universities.

"Chancellor Gordon Brown appeared to make the first tentative step towards doing this at the launch of the report in Downing Street last week when he said that he was ready 'to enter the debate' on how funding in England could be increased from private and public sources.
 

"But the most important reform that universities can make is in governance, Richard Lambert says. The case of the Netherlands illustrates this. 'Forty years ago, Dutch universities had no institutional personality,' he says. 'They were parts of the state. They had no capacity to run themselves or set institutional priorities or develop comparative advantage.' But since being given autonomy by the government they have flourished. The universities of Groningen, Leiden and Utrecht are now among the most dynamic in Europe."

As would be expected the findings by Lambert and Butler have been contested by some academics on both sides of the Channel.

"They underestimate the extent and nature of the changes that have taken place," says Professor Sir Roderick Floud, vice president of the European University Association. "It's not overstretching it to say that there has been a revolution in higher education in Europe in the last seven years which gives the lie to their remarks about universities being slow to change. I think universities have changed more in the last seven years than in the 150 years before that.

    "We need enormous increases in funding," and then adds pessimistically, "our universities are simply not big enough to compete with American ones. You can have whatever selectivity you like but it won't make up that gap."

 

Stephen Adam, a principal lecturer in politics at the University of Westminster and an expert on the Bologna accord, says. "The pace and nature of change under Bologna is absolutely unbelievable. The whole thing is reforming antiquated education systems."

 

But according to Richard Yelland, of the OECD's directorate for education, Lambert and Butler are right to make funding and governance key issues in university reform.

It's noteworthy that the authors are immersed in British industry and not in academe or government.