Nerd Triumph: American Universities Still Surpass European Counterparts

EU universities are among the worst-funded in the world, falling behind US schools and becoming vulnerable to competition from Asia, according to a new report by the London-based think-tank the Centre for European Reform (CER) out 5 June.

EU member states spend between 0.9 percent (Slovakia, Italy, the Czech republic) and 1.8 percent (Denmark, Finland, Sweden) of their GDPs on higher education, compared to 2.6 percent in the US, the study notes.

"Europe's universities, taken as a group, are failing to provide the intellectual and creative energy that is required to improve the continent's poor economic performance," CER states.

"There is a kind of drab uniformity across the sector: many institutions [especially in France, Italy and Germany] are struggling to cope with growing numbers of students and inadequate resources, delivering uninspiring teaching in dilapidated buildings."

CER cites Chinese and UK analyses saying that eight out of the top ten universities in the world and 36 out of the top 50 are based in the US, with China and India catching up and expected to enter the rankings in 2010.

The world's top ten non-US universities are: Oxford, Cambridge, Tokyo, Kyoto, Imperial College London, Toronto, University College London, the Swiss Technical Institute, British Columbia in Canada and Utrecht in the Netherlands.

The UK has five universities in the European top ten, with Switzerland, Utrecht, the Karolinska institute in Stockholm, Paris 06 in France and Munich in Germany also making the grade.

"Fifty eight percent of European citizens who received doctorates in American institutions between 1998 and 2001 chose to stay in the US once their studies were finished," the CER report says on the worrying drain on Europe's intelligentsia.

[S]everal of my Nerd Lords recently returned from a trip across the pond to Germany.   One told me that the university system is too hidebound and inflexible to go on.  One said that the leadership of those universities is in deep trouble because the former East German academics only had training in Leninist-Marxist theory, so some schools have to import talent from the former West -- which creates friction for all involved.  It was all really a surprise for me -- both the news and the bald honesty of the reports.

Another told me flatly that he thinks Germany's universities are doomed. 

"In twenty, thirty years, there won't be anything left there for talented students," the Nerd Lord declared.

"So what should those students do if they want to get ahead?" I asked.

"Emigrate."

Oh, dear!