Lucia

de Vernai

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April 15, 2009

U.S. Education Reform is Great, But Europe is Not the Model

“When in Rome do as the Romans do” is good advice for first-time tourists, surely meant to mitigate the harm to national pride that white tennis shoes in cathedrals represent. It does not, however, apply to domestic problems, although you wouldn’t know it from the zest for copying European higher education reform by privately funded pilot studies in Utah, Minnesota and Indiana.

The Bologna Process started in Italy almost a decade ago as the blurred borders of the European Union allowed workers from over 25 countries to theoretically work anywhere else in the Union, if their credentials checked out. That turned out to be a problem, since the majority of universities on the continent are controlled by sovereign national authorities, and comparing degrees was almost impossible. In a global economy, it made sense to do as Americans do and unify and harmonize higher education to increase efficacy by setting common standards for degrees.

To make sure that everyone was on the same page and that economics majors in London and Warsaw were getting roughly the same idea of what capitalism is all about, they came up with the Tuning Process to allow each discipline to agree on certain universal criteria. Faculty meetings ensued and today 145 European universities are on board.

Struggling with higher education problems of its own, the U.S. decided to follow suit. Unfortunately, instead of forgetting that the EU was trying to reach our current state, we followed in kind, trying to catch up with ourselves. The Lumina Foundation, concerned about the state of American post-secondary education, has given $150,000 to each of the states to do some tuning. Faculty meetings ensued on this side of the Atlantic as well.

The project incorrectly presupposes that Americans face the same problem as Europeans in the labor market, which is not the case. The objective is to have each discipline agree on how to make sure each student has the skills necessary to fulfill the requirements of a “civil engineer” or “journalist” anywhere in the country. Much needed in Europe, in the U.S., when jobs are available, a biologist from Texas and one from Vermont are regarded by employers as having on par education. They also speak the same language, which is an advantage a biologist from Finland and the Czech Republic may not have.

Looking to Europe to lead the way in higher education reform is only undesirable because it ignores the unique needs of our labor market and demographics. Even if enormous public universities with class sizes of over 200 and private liberal arts colleges with a one-to-12 faculty student ratio could come up with mutual standards, their achievement would prove impossible. The disparity between available faculty, facilities and funding would either leave some schools unable to meet the demands or elite schools would complain that the plebes are dragging them down. “What’s the point of being Swarthmore if you have to keep Ohio State standards?” they’d say.

Rather than seek remedy to a problem we don’t have, private money should be going to projects that focus on problems that are distinctively ours – quality in junior colleges, racial diversity across disciplines and that penchant for white shoes.

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