Avoiding the Looming University Crisis in Europe
“Universities in Europe are highly regarded in some parts of societies but are increasingly looked at with suspicion by others and within politics. This has resulted in more supervision by the government and also in less finance. That in itself is a downward spiral because it leaves universities with less possibilities to do well and to improve their educational system. In the end it will be the graduates from universities which will be the driving force behind future economic growth but also social cohesion.” Being interviewed is Jo Ritzen, author of ‘A Chance for European Universities’. Europe’s universities are very well represented among the world’s top 200 universities, but almost absent in the top 50. They are economically, culturally and socially underexploited. There is an urgent need to alter the context for European universities to strengthen the European competitive position through economic innovation, increased social cohesion and a more vibrant cultural dynamism. The unbalanced demographics in the world – with a virtually constant supply of graduates in the developed West and a potentially fast increase in the number of graduates in developing countries – pose both new threats and new opportunities for European universities.
About Jo Ritzen
“I knew I wanted to dedicate myself to education already at a time when I was a student at Delft University of Technology and at Erasmus University. After completion of my degree in Economics and particularly the Economics of Education I got the chance to work with governments in Bangladesh, Ecuador and other development countries, as well as in the Netherlands and the US. Afterwards I worked as a minister for the Dutch government for almost 10 years.” From 1989—1994 Ritzen was the Minister of Education and Science, in 1994 he became Minister of Health and Welfare, and from 1994-1998 he concluded his work for the Dutch government as Minister for Education, Culture and Science. Ritzen then moved on to the World Bank where his focus was always on education and education policy with the notion that education is something which has major contribution for people to realise their dreams. He also taught at the University of California, Nijmegen and Erasmus University (the Netherlands). As off 2003 he has been President of Maastricht University.
A book with a mission
“As a university professor, a minister and as a President of Maastricht University I found out that you do not stop thinking and learning when you are working in a management function or as a minister. It’s extremely important, in whatever job you are, to continue to learn about the field you are in. At Maastricht University I exploit how we can do better for our students in a world with all its complexities and all its developments. I gave lectures about where we want to be as a university based on learning from our environment.” It all came together in this book ‘A chance for European Universities’. A book which is not a usual book in the sense that it is only an analysis or normative in the sense of where you would like to see things go. It is a combination, it is very much a book on a mission, it wants to see to it that European universities do better for their students and therefore for their societies. The book was published in 2010 and it’s now in translation in German, Russian, Portuguese and Korean. The Koreans are particularly interested in the strategic questions concerning education, how higher education in particular fits into a changing world of work and production. Increasingly societies require more people who are able to deal with a complex world. At the same time they see that their universities are not always responding well to this question. Why is this the case? And how can you improve this within universities? For Russia, the interests in this book are similar. “There are no Korean or Russian Universities in the world’s top 50 universities, but I’m sure the Koreans will get there in the next 10 years. European universities are already represented in this list of top universities from around the world. However in the future we will probably see more Chinese universities making this list, which means that European universities will have to compete to keep their position on it. Hong Kong, Singapore, maybe even Japan or the Middle East are realistic competitors for European and other universities making the list at the moment. This is unless the quality of education offered by European universities and others continues to improve.”
In a time of crisis what can be done and by whom to see to it that European universities continue to improve and excel on the international market?
Part of the crisis is that we see that all European countries that have serious budgetary problems tend to cut back on universities. At the same time governments leave very little leeway for private financing. “This is precisely the opposite of rescuing the economy. It is short term orientation. In the long term it will be the knowledge content of our society which determines the sustainable economic growth level. Europe has not been performing as well as the US and definitely not as well as some of the emerging economies. This can be attributed in part, you might say, to the underutilisation of universities.” Rather in a crisis to avert from using universities less, governments should go in the opposite direction by investing more in universities. It is a matter of finance and governance. Giving universities the room for empowerment, making sure that universities can use their full potential to educate students rather than to comply with more or less the accidental thoughts of politicians. “The biggest mistake you can make as a government is to cut back on your future investment. Where physical capital used to mean the way in which investments were made, nowadays it is vastly available worldwide, but human capital is scarce. You notice that human capital has become more and more expensive in recent years despite the fact that so many more graduates came from universities. The relative wage for a university student compared to someone who has not completed college or university has been increasing in recent years.”
Cooperation is important and necessary but in many respects competition is even more important
Cooperation can be great because we can learn from each other. Cooperation can also be interesting for students when we are talking about for instance joined degrees. Cross border cooperation is extremely difficult however because of the differences in governance and legal systems. But what can we learn from the strategy of other universities? And we can also look at practical details such as how admissions are being managed by other universities. “All this said, I believe it is even more important to have competition. The Netherlands and Germany have the ranking for higher education (The Center for Higher Education, CHE) which makes it clear where a study is well organised and where it is not. As a student you get unbiased information which makes your choice between universities easier. In other words, cooperation is important and necessary but in many respects competition is even more important on the level of playing field.” In the Netherlands there is competition between university and in the field of universities of applied sciences because of the fact that we have data and comparisons. For Germany it is the same, but many other countries lack the methods to make comparisons. “Secondly I think what we really miss is that normally competition pays of if you do well. In sports you can get a toffee or a medal if you win, but there is no such thing in education. There is no incentive to do better. I would like to see this on the side of governance.”
What does a better position for a European university within the world’s best universities mean for the European economy and/or employment market?
When you compare the US and Europe, there has been for a decade or two an excess in economic growth of at least 1% per year for the US. That is explained in part by higher education and by the way in which higher education plays a role on the labour market and on the economy through entrepreneurship and innovation. Additional investment in higher education, including of course the release of the powers through legislation (which would cost nothing), giving more freedom to universities, within accountability, to do better, would lead (at least) to 1 to 2% of economic growth per year. This has been measured by Philip Aghion in growth theory which gives strong indication (in economics you can never say that you are 100% certain) about the correlation between the number of university graduates and economic growth.
Empowered European Universities
Recently a manifesto on higher education has come about in which the main lines of thinking of the book were supported by a group of some 20 experts, many former ministers, but also experts on academic level in Europe. It has been followed up by a foundation which is called Empowered European Universities. That foundation will have a framework for evaluating government policy with respect to higher education based on what we know about policy directions which lead to more or less performance in higher education. This framework will be used by each of the 27 Member States in the European Union to evaluate the quality of the policies. “By June 2012 we will have a first record on the quality of higher education policy for each individual country. When I say quality I mean that if the quality is high, you may expect that in that country universities are able to contribute substantially to economic growth. When the quality is low you can say that the power of universities within that country is underutilised.”
Order Information
Author: Jo Ritzen
Title: A Chance for European Universities
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Year: 2010
ISBN: 978 90 8964 229 5
EUKN, Elizabeth Winkel