In a
landmark study released today by the Lisbon Council, OECD education expert
Andreas Schleicher paints a devastating picture of Europe’s deteriorating
education system, noting that Europe is falling behind in the quality and
quantity of its graduates, in the openness of its system to students from all
social backgrounds and in the availability of education and training to those
who need it most. "International comparisons show the challenges that lie ahead
for Europe," Mr. Schleicher writes in the report, called
The Economics of Knowledge: Why Education is Key to
Europe’s Success. "The task of European governments will be to ensure
that European countries rise to this challenge."
Table 5: More people have university
degrees
Approximated by the percentage of persons with
ISCED 5A/6 qualification in the age groups 55-64,
45-55, 35-44 and 25-34 years (2003)
The report is
available for downloading on the Lisbon Council website at www.lisboncouncil.net.
Among the key
findings:
• Six years after European
Union leaders vowed to create "the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based
economy in the world," spending on education in Europe at all levels
(primary, secondary and tertiary) remains well behind Japan and the United
States. In tertiary or college-level education, the U.S. invests on average
50% more per student than Europe.
• Most countries around the
world are producing more and more college graduates, but France, Italy and
the United Kingdom only produce as many college graduates as a percentage of
their population as they did in the 1960s. Today, Germany even produces
fewer college graduates as a percentage of the population than it did in the
1960s.
• Social background plays
a larger role in determining a student’s performance in Germany, France and
Italy than in the U.S. For example, German children with parents in
white-collar, high-skilled occupations have a four-fold higher chance of
enrolling in the tracks leading to university than those with parents from
blue-collar or low-skilled occupations, even if the students display the same
level of educational performance at an early age. In other words, European
school systems are sustaining and re-enforcing existing social inequalities and
discriminating against students from lower-class households and
immigrants.
• Life-long
education does not reach the people who need it most. Workers who have not completed upper-secondary education are
on average less than half as likely to be found in post-school education and
training programmes in most European countries.
A large percentage of
European youth is neither in work nor education. More than 10% of 15- to
19-year-olds in France, Italy and the Slovak Republic are neither studying nor
working.
Table 7: EU spends less on education per student at all
levels
In equivalent US dollars converted using
PPPs
Says Paul
Hofheinz, president of the Lisbon Council: "If our political leaders were
students, we should give them a whopping ‘F’ for failing to prepare our society
for the future and delivering the knowledge economy they promised six years ago.
It is downright immoral to send our children into a world of rising
international competition without giving them the best tools we can to help them
survive and thrive. We call on European leaders to put their money where their
mouth is – to stop talking about reform and to start helping us prepare for a
future at the forefront of 21 st century economic
developments. Developing our human capital will be the key to our economic
success. And it’s our human capital that we are most conspicuously failing to
invest in."
Adds Ann Mettler,
executive director of the Lisbon Council: "Europe must be suffering from a
collective delusion if we really believe we are building a ‘dynamic
knowledge-based economy’ by blatantly under-investing in education and skills.
As a European, I am incensed: we are paying the highest taxes in the world, our
governments have been running excessive deficits for years, and still we manage
to chronically under-fund our educational system. In year six of the Lisbon
Agenda, this is truly a slap in the face of each and every European. How can our
leaders claim they are ‘doing all they can’ on Europe’s Growth and Jobs agenda,
when in fact the European Union continues to spend more than 40% of its budget
on farm subsidies, while we spend less than 50% per student than the U.S. on
college-level education?"
Adds Joeri van
den Steenhoven, chairman of the Dutch think tank Kennisland and Member of the
Board of the Lisbon Council: "There has been resistance to change in many
countries in the EU. If we want people to change, we need to provide them with
the tools. That means education. It is the only way to move the Lisbon Agenda
from an elitist research- and technology-driven agenda towards a people-oriented
social-economic one."
The
Lisbon Council for Economic Competitiveness asbl is a
Brussels-based non-profit policy network committed to making Europe "the most
competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world," a goal which
European heads of state and government set in 2000. The group is dedicated to
making a positive contribution by engaging politicians and the public-at-large
in a constructive exchange about Europe’s economic future.
The
economics of knowledge: Why education is key to Europe's
success
