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Main Content
More Money Needed For European Universities
A shrinking labour supply, pressure on energy and resources, globalisation; a few of the major challenges facing Europe. And then in 2008, an iceberg hits seeing Europe's interdependent economies gradually sink. This iceberg, that emerged back in 2008 left millions jobless, brought about a huge burden of debt and put pressure on social cohesion. In brief, it brought about an opportunity for Europe to relaunch its economic policy for the near future.
So, under the instruction of its President, Jose Manuel Barroso, the European Commission launched a new economic strategy earlier this month. Known as 'Europe 2020', it aims to link national fiscal stabilisation programmes to expenditure in areas such as R&D and education.
According the Commission, the European Union must define where it wants to be in ten years and helped it to do so by proposing the following suggestions:
- that 75% of the population aged 20-64 be employed;
- that 3% of the EU's GDP be invested in Research and Development;
- that the 20/20/20 climate targets be met including an increase to 30% of emissions reductions if possible;
- that 20 million less people should be at risk of poverty;
- that the share of early school leavers be under 10%;
- that at least 40% of the younger generation should have a tertiary degree.
But, how can the Commission expect four in ten youngsters to obtain a tertiary degree if their economic plan does not even allude to an expansion in university teaching? The reality is, spending on higher education has been cut all in the last few years because of government's budget deficits.
The Higher Education Funding Council for England announced recently a budget cut of 450 million pounds for this year alone and Ireland, which already reduced its university funding by 6 per cent last year, is applying a further cutback of 10 per cent.
According to the European Studies lecturer at Trinity College in Dublin, Séan Brady, the cutbacks are bringing about huge inconveniences in administration seeing single employees run individual departments, something that leads to delays, overwork and not to mention disorganisation.
Countries like Austria, Italy, Hungary and Poland, who used to highly invest in their universities are also starting to reduce education budgets while university spending in Latvia was halved.
The European University Association that represents higher education systems in 46 countries has launched a publicity campaign forcing governments to spend more on universities. According to their representative, Thomas Estermann, “the impact of the crisis on higher education has quite clearly led to diverse developments across Europe”. Students have already started to protest against staff cuts, declining stands, oversubscribed course and higher fees. Last year, Austrian, German and Swiss students were holding regular sit-ins while numerous students protested at the University of Copenhagen last month.
At the end of the day, it is the students themselves who will suffer most. Fees will shoot up meaning that only an elite minority will be able to the afford the luxury of third level education. So Mr. Barroso's utopia of a highly educated Europe with 40% holding a third level degree will hardly become a reality in his lifetime.