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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
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