TW: This piece speaks to an area where I think the U.S. is under appreciated- the great leveling impact of our university system. Folks tend to see those educational aptitude tests which take snapshots of students in grade school and high school and lament how far behind U.S. students are relative to other nations. What is missed sometimes though is that many international students slow their growth post-high school as many international universities are not as rigorous as American universities. Americans on the other hand accelerate their educational growth during the college years. Or more simply many international students work their asses off in high-school then take a break. Americans may not spend as much time in school prior to college but continue working hard through college graduation. At the end the educational attainment has equalized.European universities tend to be relatively under-funded, dogmatic in their approaches and less pragmatic than their American counter-parts.
From Economist:
"...German universities are underfunded by international standards (see chart). Professors juggle scores of students; at top American universities they nurture a handful. In switching to the bachelors-masters degrees prescribed by Europe’s standardising “Bologna process”, many universities tried to cram bachelors degrees into just six terms. Only six German universities are among the top 100 in the Shanghai rankings (Munich is highest, at 55th). Just 21% of each age cohort gets a degree; the OECD average is 37%.
...the federal and state governments approved an €18 billion plan to create more university places, boost funding for research and cultivate a small group of elite institutions. It is “a signal that research and education are being taken seriously,”
..In the past, universities were interchangeable, and most students chose one close to home. But since the early 1990s budget cuts have encouraged them to compete and specialise. Their state paymasters began to link cash to professors’ publications and their ability to attract outside money. The government’s new “excellence initiative” goads them to differentiate still more, showering €1.9 billion on research programmes and nine “top universities” with promising “future concepts”.
...Goethe University is in the vanguard. Last year it became a “foundation university”, loosening its ties to the state of Hesse, and expanding its freedom to hire and manage staff, and to raise money from private sources. “We can now pay competitive salaries,” says Mr Müller-Esterl. The university has hired 50 new professors, including some from foreign rivals. No longer a state agency, the university now finds it easier to raise money from private donors who want to know how it will be spent. Mr Müller-Esterl hopes the university will build its puny €125m endowment up to €5 billion-6 billion.
...The main gap in university financing is not the contribution of the state, which matches America’s, but in private funding and fees. Tuition fees, as the student protests suggest, are politically explosive...Most western German states allow tuition fees of a meagre €500 per term, but universities “can’t plan long term because they don’t know if the next government will take it away,” says Ms Wintermantel.
...Still, these pressures push German universities in the right direction. World rankings tend to underrate them, partly because non-English-speaking laboratories are penalised. They would do better if research at non-university institutes like the Max Planck Society were brought into academies, adding teaching to research. That is happening: an example is the merger of Karlsruhe University and the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe to form Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, modelled on MIT. “In ten to 15 years a few universities will have a place in the top international league,” says Matthias Kleiner, head of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, which funnels money to research. Perhaps Goethe University will be among them. "
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