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EUROPE HAS NO NEED OF A FLAWED ELITE UNIVERSITY
Wolfgang Munchau

One of the more bizarre schemes of Europe's indefatigable reformers is to establish an elite university, called the European Institute of Technology, by 2009. The name suggests that the European Union is trying to create a clone of the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US.
The EIT epitomises the confused thinking in the debate about Europe's economic future. It is based on the misconception that elite universities can be established by diktat. In fact, they evolve over time and only in the right environment.
The planned institute is the negation of this principle. It will be the ultimate European champion, the academic equivalent of the Airbus project but with a much more uncertain pay-off. The institute will be an applied science and technology graduate school that offers masters and doctorate degrees. It will be sufficiently endowed to be in a position to headhunt some of the best talent in its chosen sectors. But it will not be a university in the traditional sense. The recent EU summit has decided that there shall be no central campus, which will leave the EIT as a virtual university with departments and labs scattered all over Europe.

This scheme is badly designed, wasteful and will not address Europe's main problems in academic research - insufficient quality and intellectual fragmentation owing to a proliferation of second-rate research universities.
There are altogether 2,000 universities in the EU that claim to do serious research and award postgraduate degrees - approximately ten times as many as in the US. On top of this, the EU is spending less money on research in total. It is no surprise that only a few European universities are at the top of global academic league tables. Many of Europe's best academics work in the US and there is no sign that the brain drain is about to end.
There is an obvious solution to this problem. National governments could introduce more competition between universities, make universities more independent and spend more public money on research, either directly or through public procurement contracts. More competition would include tuition fees, granting universities the right to select their own students and ending life-long tenure of professors. The goal would be to reduce the fragmentation of research and to ensure that funds get channelled to the best departments.
The EU can play a useful, but limited, role in this process. For example, the proposals to establish a European Research Council, a funding agency to support world-class research, are the right way forward. But the EU should not try to solve problems that have arisen at a national level.
It would have been much better to have strengthened existing universities rather than to set up an entirely new institution, which will probably fall short of its lofty ambitions. A survey by the European Commission suggested that the academic and research community expects the EIT to have a greater impact on industrial than academic research. In other words, it will not be an MIT, which is one of the best academic institutions in the world.

In other words, this is the kind of project that creates uncertainty, yields no benefits and carries big downside risks. The EIT could harm existing universities because it will have sufficient funds to headhunt their most talented researchers. But it is not demonstrably clear that this new behemoth is going to work well.

WOLFGANG MUNCHAU
Tratto dal «Financial Times» del 10 aprile


  • Academic institutions: istituzioni accademiche/universitarie
  • Academic research: ricerca universitaria
  • Applied science and technology: scienze e tecnologie applicate
  • Behemoth: colosso
  • Benefits: vantaggi
  • Brain drain: fuga di cervelli
  • Central campus: campus centralizzato
  • Doctorate degrees: lauree di terzo livello, dottorati
  • Downside risks: rischi di perdita
  • Elite university: università di élite
  • Funding agency: agenzia di finanziamento
  • Funds: fondi
  • Graduate school: istituto universitario per laureati
  • (to) Headhunt: andare alla ricerca di (personale di alto livello)
  • League table: classifiche, graduatorie
  • Masters: lauree di secondo livello
  • National governments: governi nazionali
  • Payoff: (tempi di) recupero del capitale investito
  • Postgraduate degrees: titoli universitari post-laurea (di primo livello)
  • Public money: denaro pubblico
  • Public procurement contracts: contratti pubblici di appalto
  • Research universities: istituti universitari di ricerca
  • Tenure: posto di ruolo/incarico permanente
  • Tuition fees: tasse scolastiche
  • Virtual university: università virtuale