Europe’s universities will end up as “beautiful museums”

Europe’s universities will end up as “beautiful museums” unless academics harness knowledge to economic forces, warns Ján Figel’.

The European education commissioner tells EUpolitix that universities need to forge partnerships with the private sector.

“We have glorious traditional universities, places where strong identities exist, but much of the time they are living in closed spaces,” he tells this website.

“The success of competitors, and mainly the US, is closing the space between education, research and business.”

“If we don’t change something, the best researchers and talents will go to the US, agriculture to Brazil, services to India, industries to China and Europe will be full of beautiful museums.”

The Slovakian commissioner is pushing education, and educational institutions, to the heart of the EU’s drive to boost growth.

Key to arresting Europe’s brain drain, as researchers leave to work in more economies, are proposals to bring private investment into universities and to make research more relevant to business.

Read full article: EU Politix, 21 April 2006