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Why Reform Europe's Universities? Bruegel policy brief 2007/04, September 2007

Aghion, Phillipe and Dewatripont, Mathias and Hoxby, Caroline and Mas-Colell, Andreu and Sapir, Andre. (2007) Why Reform Europe's Universities? Bruegel policy brief 2007/04, September 2007. [Policy Paper]

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    Abstract

    Summary. Recently published international rankings indicate that the performance gap between European and American universities is large and, in particular, that the best European universities lag far behind the best American universities. The country performance index we construct using the Shanghai ranking confirms that, despite the good performance of some countries, Europe as a whole trails the US by a wide margin. The reason for this situation, which contributes to Europe’s lagging growth performance, is two-fold. First, Europe invests too little in higher education. Total public and private spending on higher education in EU25 accounts for barely 1.3% of GDP, against 3.3% in the US. This translates into average spending of less than €10,000 per student in EU25 versus more than €35,000 in the US. Second, European universities suffer from poor governance, insufficient autonomy and often perverse incentives. Our own survey of European universities shows that both factors contribute to the EU’s poor performance and that reform should take place on both fronts, because autonomy also increases the efficiency of spending.

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    Item Type: Policy Paper
    Subjects for non-EU documents: EU policies and themes > Policies & related activities > education policy/vocational training
    Subjects for EU documents: UNSPECIFIED
    EU Series and Periodicals: UNSPECIFIED
    EU Annual Reports: UNSPECIFIED
    Series: Series > Bruegel (Brussels) > Policy Briefs
    Depositing User: Phil Wilkin
    Official EU Document: No
    Language: English
    Date Deposited: 05 Jun 2008
    Page Range: p. 8
    Last Modified: 15 Feb 2011 17:53
    URI: http://aei.pitt.edu/id/eprint/8323

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