Brussels, 21/04/2005 (Agence Europe) - European universities are not up to the task of fully taking up their role in the Lisbon Strategy, and must bring in new strategies, states the European Commission in a communication adopted on Wednesday “Mobilising European brains: allowing universities to contribute fully to the Lisbon Strategy”, which lists the weaknesses hindering European universities compared to their American and Japanese counterparts. “Although on average, they are of fairly good quality, European universities are failing to meet their full potential”, said Commissioner Jan Figel, who is in charge of dossiers including education and training. In terms of education, the principle of subsidiarity prevails, he said, noting that the Commission has its part to play, particularly to support mobility, boost the quality of programmes and guide the reform process currently underway (Bologna process). The communication refers to three fields of priority action for European universities: 1) making them more attractive; 2) improving their governance; 3) increasing and diversifying their funding. The Commission calls on the Member States to ensure that their regulatory framework allows university heads to undertake genuine reform, and the universities to concentrate on promoting and developing their human potential, qualitatively and quantitatively alike. He quoted a few figures: in Europe, scarcely 21% of the working-age population pursues higher studies, compared to 38% in the United States, 43% in Canada and 36% in Japan. The Commission feels that this situation can be imputed to “a lack of reactivity in higher education to societal changes and of a model for life-long education and training”. The Commission also points to an enormous difference in funding; on average, the countries of the EU spend little more than 1.1% of their GDP on higher education, compared to 2.7% in the US and 2.5% in Canada (Japan's percentage is similar to that of the EU). In order to hit American levels of investment, Europe would have to devote an extra 150 billion EUR a year to higher education, the Commission noted.
The Commission then welcomed the proposal by the European University Institute of Florence (IUE) to launch a new “Max Weber” post-doctoral programme in social sciences in 2006. This programme targets the Lisbon objectives, as it hopes to stem the tide of young researchers leaving the EU for the US. “Europe currently offers almost nothing in terms of post-doctoral studies. This is very much in its infancy”, said Yves Mény, the IUE president, stressing the need for Europe to join the EU in this healthy competition.