Excellence Ranking 2009 And the Crisis of the European University

Tausch Higher education and societal development EXCEL data file (3 Tables)

The Austrian political scientist Arno Tausch foresaw already in 1991 in an article for the widely circulated social democratic monthly “Die Zukunft”, published in Vienna, the crisis of the European Universities. Tausch proposed then the idea of a full University democracy with free elections of University Presidents, Deans etc. with a net household income per capita weighted tuition system.

We document the original 1991German language article [translated title 'Americanize the universities. Higher education reform remains on the political agenda '(Die Zukunft, 8: 5-9)] in full. It is argued that after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the continental European university is the last bastion of the inefficient command economy, and that once and for all, Europe must learn from the best-practice Anglo-American model. Although in theory a “Scandinavian” alternative, which is government-funded is theoretically possible, in Austria (and most other continental European countries), such a Scandinavian reform perspective is very little likely, because too many special interests are being attended to in the political systems on the continent, and substantial efforts – such as improving the educational system – more and more are becoming unsuccessful, the older, our democracies become.

The harsh and bitter predictions of this article, written in 1991 have materialized, and in fact the current crisis of “empty shelves” in our class rooms around Europe reminds us of the “state capitalist supermarkets” in Hungary, Poland etc. in the late 1970s and 1980s. Even in times of such extreme shortages and overcrowded classrooms European publics are not ready to discuss the price of commodity education in general, even though we all perfectly know socially exclusively our tertiary education systems are. One continues to subsidize the upper and middle classes, from which students primarily are being recruited all over Europe.

In contrast to the global and borderless, and internationally acclaimed academic culture of the Anglo-American, Israeli and Scandinavian universities the “reforms” of the 1990s and beyond increased the rigid authoritarian structures of our universities and cemented the academic hierarchies.

The then predicted crisis now occurred with full force, under the burden of the general economic crisis in 2008, under the weight of globalization, which has ultimately led to a polarized structure of government revenues and spending, as it would have been unthinkable in the 1990s in most European countries. The best European minds already leave the continent for good.

According to the data of the most recent UNDP Human Development Report, European students already vote with their own feet where the best University systems are. Attractive scholarships to foreign Universities, attractive job offers abroad etc. all too often are the beginning of a long, massive but silent migration process away from the least effective European University systems or – in the British case – to still more attractive job markets overseas:

Download the Excel files:  world universities and globalization

world universities(2) OECD

Further recommended links:

OECD Internet Platform EDUCATION

http://www.oecd.org/topic/0,3373,en_2649_37455_1_1_1_1_37455,00.html

World Bank Tertiary Education

http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTEDUCATION/0,,contentMDK:20298183~menuPK:617592~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:282386,00.html

Excellence Ranking

ERRATUM: 

We found out that there is a small error for the UNDP education index for countries whose name starts with the letter C. We are sorry for the error. errata_public access