Disaster in Europe
Higher Education is a Mess
By Daniel Muniz

Higher education in Europe is a disaster. Instead of earning a paycheck, far too many college graduates are ending up with welfare checks. And of the recent graduates that do get a job, too many of them end up doing menial labor such as food preparation or waiting tables. Many European leaders are fretting over how to solve this dilemma because the economic futures of their countries are at stake.

But in all truthfulness, decades of socialism did not bring about the scholastic Utopia that so many people envisioned.

Free tuition and the option to pursue easy but totally worthless degrees created a class of professional students and graduates with very few employable skills who are unable to compete in an increasingly technical workforce. In addition, because the students weren’t paying for college, there wasn’t any incentive to finish their studies in a timely manner.

With the monopolistic nature of state run universities, there wasn’t any or much competition from private colleges. In socialist Europe, no competition means that you have to accept whatever the government gives you. And for most of the European Union, it wasn’t very much. Many universities in Europe have technology, infrastructure, curriculums, and equipment that are severely outdated and outmoded. As a result, many college graduates barely have any marketable skills needed for a modern workforce such as being able to correctly use a word processor, etc.

In addition, the European institutions of higher education are financially strapped. Without charging tuition or only having miniscule fees, the government ends up footing the entire bill for their university system. Consequently, that doesn’t leave very many resources to maintain these colleges at any adequate level of quality.

And in a continent accustomed to generations of entitlements, changing the system is next to impossible.

Europeans loathe how America modeled its universities in a free market approach. They despise the idea of having to pay tuition or even the concept of repaying student loans. They detest how so many American universities, public and private, actually have a selection process instead of an open admission policy.

But still worse, European universities do not value the marketability of college degrees that teach students a trade or a profession that is useful in a competitive workplace. Instead, they place a huge emphasis on the degree plans that instill abstract knowledge but have absolutely no marketing value in the real world.

Consequently, the results speak for themselves.

Recipients of the science Nobel prizes are mostly Americans. In fact, the Academic Ranking of World Universities, which places a strong emphasis on universities who have staff and alumni that are Nobel Prize recipients as well as having publications in the most respected journals, 17 of the top 20 schools in the world were in America.

To no one’s surprise, that list included Harvard, Stanford, and MIT. Of course, those universities along with other top American schools also have over a billion dollars in private endowments. In fact, the United States has 56 schools with billion dollar endowments. Naturally, Harvard has the biggest private endowment totaling 25 billion dollars followed by Yale which is worth 15 billion dollars.

But more to the point is that even the very average American universities are still the envy of the world.

However, not all is lost in Europe.

British schools Cambridge and Oxford were also included in that top 20 list. Unlike European universities, both English schools are highly regarded in the quality of education and with their faculty and staff. And both institutions also have their own private endowments worth over a billion dollars.

In addition, Great Britain began revamping its higher education system in the late 1990’s. To the consternation of most Brits, state universities started charging tuition. And somewhat similar to America, the tuition is collected is in the form of a student loan thus it has to be paid back. In addition, British schools are becoming more selective on whom they admit and they are now placing an increasing emphasis on foreign students. In fact, every year the competition gets fiercer on which applicants British universities will accept.

As a result, other European countries are now tinkering with their higher education institutions. Greece wants to remove the ban on private universities. Germany wants to put an end to the quagmire of professional students and the country also wants to start charging tuition. Other countries are implementing new stipulations that require students to finish their degree plans faster which will greatly diminish the strain on their education budgets.

But resistance to change is still fierce. Every government that wants to change the status quo faces massive student demonstrations as well as enormous political pressure.

The fact of the matter is that most European students don’t want to take the responsibility for learning marketable trades and professions even if it means a lifetime of menial labor. And other students also do not want to take their coursework seriously, especially since they are not paying for it. In addition, universities don’t want to be held accountable for their own fiscal solvency and they definitely don’t want competition from private independent colleges.

And then there is the underlying belief (or snobbery) that knowledge obtained from a worthless degree that has no marketing value in the workplace is still more important than learning a trade or profession.

With the exception of Great Britain, most of Europe is on the decline in regards to higher education. Third World countries like China and India are rapidly catching up and both nations may very well become economic superpowers in the near future. If the European Union wants to maintain an educated workforce that can successfully compete in an increasingly sophisticated global economy, they need to forgo their sense of entitlements and prepare for an environment that demands technically competent employees.

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