Focus article at the issue of GlobalEurope Anticipation Bulletin in October 2007, discussed the values of international academic degrees and their future trends. Purpose of the analysis prepared by the LEAP/Europe 2020 is, as stated in the paper, "to bring real answers to parents or students willing to invest...in a degree with an international scope". Given the strategic importance of the top education for long term future of Europe, this certainly is an issue worth to be followed very closely.

Observing positive trends in proportion of European and international students studying in the USA and in the EU countries twenty years ago and today, the study comes to optimistic conclusion, that good education investments of the future will be in academic degrees from European and some Asian universities at the expense of American ones. This may well be true, but the prophecy is not automatic and self-fulfilling: we, Europeans, need to work hard to get there.

Here is why.

As is broadly accepted, American basic level public education is pretty much disaster while most public high schools are more-less mediocre (however, with some important exceptions). This seems to be true also about large field of American colleges and universities, that are equal if not worse than European ones. The trouble - or, better, the challenge -are 50 to 100 top U.S. universities. American education system is as polarized as all American society is: it leaves masses behind, but pushes narrow  elites way forward. Case of the U.S. health care system with 47 million uninsured and additional tens of millions underinsured people, or masses of quasi-feudal employees with 2 weeks annual leave or women with close to none maternity leaves speak for themselves.

But then there is the other pole of society, that drains from all the United States and many parts of the world the best and concentrates them in a few dozens of academic institutions: the best students to the best laboratories to learn and work with the best professors, that are offered the highest salaries. Given this concentration of resources on the narrow elite, it appears to be safe to estimate, that degrees from around 50 to 100 top US universities will most likely remain to be a good investment.  Unless EU does not succeed in creating a number of top educational institutions rivalling Massachusets Institute of Technology and California Institute of Technology and John Hopkins University and the likes, these institutions will remain "Meccas" of global education and their degrees will remain very difficult to match or beat in the realm of world science, research, medicine and elsewhere.

Are we on the track to become educational hyper-power of the world? LEAP/Europe 2020 study points out, that the number of foreign students in EU member states in 2006 more doubled those in the USA (over 1.200,000 to 560,000). The steady decrease in the relative proportion of foreigners studying in the U.S. out of global pool of international students, authors attribute to overall political,
cultural and moral consequences of current developments in the USA. Iraq invasion and bloody occupation, Abu Ghreib and  Guantanamo abuses, American security obsession, disgraceful carricateur of George Bush, paranoic visa restrictions, annoying if not humiliating tretment of all foreigners enetering the U.S. as potential criminals are just few to be mentioned. This is certainly
part of the true. But we should not ignore another fundamental reason: dramatically growing costs of studying in the U.S. The average cost of tuition and fees for one year of study at private college in the U.S. grew up from around 17.000 US$ in 1996 to 22.200 US$ in  2006. For public universities the
growth was from around 4.000 US$ in 1996 to over 5.800 US$ in 2006. Recent free fall of US dollar value certainly compensates this growth in costs for Europeans and those, whose currency is strengthening against the once mighty US$. This may reverse the trend, as the demand for U.S. degrees has certainly something to do with their costs too. 

Does observed trend in the number of foreign students in the U.S. translate into less top students entering US universities?  Are their top international rankings decreasing? These questions are much more difficult to answer. Even the number of foreign students in the US universities was growing in the 1999-2005 period, albeit by meager 17%, much less than elsewhere. But who are those 560.000 foreign students in the U.S. in terms of their academic performance?

Can we exclude possibilty, that many of them  are "cream of the cream", some of them qualifying for numerous American private and university schollarships?

So far we certainly do not observe dramatic decrease in the academic strenghts of top U.S. universities compare to the rest of the world.

Americans are quite obsessed by ranking their universities , with high ranking serving as a powerful marketing tools - hence caveat in taking their own rankings too seriously. We may reasonably expect, that more reliable reference frame may be provided by Shanghai - based Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) projects, ranking top 500 world universities since 2003 and continually
sharpening their methodology. It still may be biased towards American (and maybe also British?) educational institutions, but probaly less than any US ranking.

In 2003, out of 50 top world universities identified by ARWU, 36 were American and 9 were west European - five British, two Swiss, one Swedish and one German.

Out of top 101 world universities, 30 came from "EU +"  countries (e.g. UK, Germany, Sweden, France, Netherlands, Danmark, Italy, Finland, Austria, Belgium plus Switzerland and Norway from non-EU west Europe). Full 59 were American universities!

In 2007 figures there is only a very minor shift towards Europe: out of the top 100 world universities, 33 (only 3 more comparing to 2003) come from western Europe( e.g. EU plus 2), while 53% - only 6 less than in 2003 - are still American. If there is the trend, it is quite weak. The figures are better for
Europe, when we look at full top 500 world universities identified by ARWU this year: 40,6% are west European universities (based in 18 EU member states plus Switzerland and Norway) and "only" 33% are  based in the U.S. Notable also is, that only very few universities from new EU member states made it to the top 500 list - two from each Hungary and Poland, and one each from Czech Republic and Slovenia.

To replace US as the top education Mecca of the world, Europe may be on the track, but still has long way to go. Language is one important factor giving American universities huge advantage. Using just one - English - makes them readily accessible to savy crowds from all around the world. British and Irish universities have the same benefit, but many languages used at universities accross EU are in some cases more curse, then blessing. Some languages certainly are a huge opportunity - imagine Sevilla, Barcelona or Porto Institutes of Science and Techology rivaling MIT and Caltech and attracting talents from all Latin America - but unless several languages including English will be commonly used as language of instruction at key universities across most of Europe, American ones will retain their huge advantage.

Europe will not become education hyper-power anytime soon without investing heavily into creating a number of super-class educational institutions. Would it be by creating new top institutions "on the green medow" or by strenghtening the strongest schools, faculties and laboratories at existing universities, more euros need to go to a dozen or two top facilities and clusters selected on the merit via rigorous competition. Pork barrell politics putting !national interests" above interest of Europe can easily undermine if not kill such efforts.

But money and languages are certainly not all. No doubt there are many other things that could increase competitiveness of our universities and attract more talented youth, including bringing home young Europeans investing their talents at top American schools and not loosing them anymore. Here I can contribute a small family story. Both my sons, who just graduated from a high school in the U.S., just started to study at University of Maryland. They did so despite my strong encouragement to apply to some universities in Europe. Why?

They did not really have the option to return to a Slovak or some Central European universities. Some EU countries simply do not recognize American "Advanced Placement" (AP) tests, despite the fact that hundreds of better universities in Germany, United Kingdom or elsewhere do recognize them. This reflects a different topic of backward, closed and self-satisfied university ghettos in new EU member states. They could not study in many other places due to language barrier. They however certainly had option to apply to some good British or Scandinavian schools. Why they did not? For a very simple, yet legitimate reason: they were not quite sure what exactly they want to study.

One son knows for sure it is science (and actually studies at University of Maryland mathematics and physics), the other considers business and economics. But no one is yet quite sure to decide which field of science or business is of real interest to them. Does it surprise anyone? Hardly. American college system recognize this reality and give students opportunity to postpone that serious decision to when they are more mature and ready to make it. In Europe we expect 18 - 19 years old "kids" to decide. Maybe here is something we can learn from Americans.

And we should certainly think seriously about how to get those young Europeans-EU citizen as well as not - studying in the U.S. back home, so they enrich our academic environment and are not lost for Europe. Sooner we do it, more will return.

Juraj Mesik*
Washington

-> Read: Value of international academic degrees: How to choose today an international degree that will still be worth something in ten to twenty years? - LEAP/2020 Excerpt GEAB N°18 (October 16, 2007)

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