The Hindu Business Line : Education: Learning from Europe

Education is seen in Europe as the principal tool for coping with the uncertainty implicit in a world where people at every stage of their lives can welcome change. The goal of the education policy is to provide each citizen with opportunities to grow personally, professionally, and as a citizen. The state is to provide equal educational opportunities, for all.

Mark Twain once famously whispered: "Education is the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty."

Possibly. But surely education, culture, science and learning are at the heart of European society. They matter even before they begin to weigh up economic considerations. They are an inherent part of the European society.

Exactly a year ago, European leaders meeting in Brussels endorsed the European Commission proposals to breathe new life into the Lisbon Agenda — the blueprint for growth and employment that the EU adopted six years ago.

These proposals exemplify a vision of a knowledge-based society, a society which seeks to use education, research and innovation as engines for sustainable growth.

In fact pooled with the two other objectives the Commission proposed — making Europe a more attractive place to invest and work, and creating more and better jobs — the delivery of a new, refocused Lisbon Agenda could boost Europe's natural rate of growth to around 3 per cent per year and bring the goal of full employment within reach by the end of the decade.

The EU is already the world's biggest market, biggest exporter and biggest foreigner investor. The European Commission and the Member-States are the world's biggest donor of foreign aid. Europe is home to many of the world's leading and most successful companies and the countries which recently joined the EU are some of the fastest growing economies in the world.

Various surveys consistently show that Europe has some excellent universities and that many of them, are world class.

Backpacker-Style Education

My wife recently asked me if I knew the difference between travellers and backpackers.

Travellers, she said, choose the fastest way of getting from A to B, and get irritated if they are delayed. Backpackers drift, admire the scenery, stay where they please, and move on when they feel like it.

Europe has the `backpacker' style, open education system in which students can move freely, driven by the content and quality of courses, and the reputations of universities for their teaching and research.

More precisely, the way the European higher education and research area contributes to promote a social dimension and strengthen an advanced social model can be analysed through four major viewpoints: Accessibility, Affordability, Quality, and Funding.

First, the social dimension deals with the conditions for access to higher education. Merit and that alone is the criteria.

Any student deserving to pursue a particular stream of education can definitely do so. There are no hurdles. No stopping.

Citizens are able to choose the type of education they want and given access to their preferred occupation or profession.

The goal of the education policy is therefore to provide each citizen with opportunities to grow personally, professionally, and as a citizen in accordance with his or her abilities and preferences. The state is to provide equal educational opportunities, for all.

Second, pursuing European higher education and research area is absolutely free of cost! Tuition at institutions of higher education amounts to no more than meeting living expenses.

Let us take the German example: This has been one of the pillars of the country's social state. The tuition-free system costs $28.5 billion a year, where the states pay 90 per cent and the federal government adds 10 per cent.

The quality of education and the funding have never been an issue. Here again, Grundlichkeit, meaning accuracy or detail, is a phrase that best describes the Germans. They always calculate everything down to the last detail. That's where they differ from us.

Last, the social dimension of higher education development is also decisively reflected at the end of the degree course, by the opportunities of economic integration and access to employment it provides to new beneficiaries from higher education learning paths.

Educational Policy Making

In Germany, for instance, the Basic Law of 1949 reaffirmed the 19th century tradition under which the states (Länder) were responsible for education. In higher, or tertiary, education, the states share responsibility with the federal government.

The federal government, for example, oversees vocational education and training — a very important component of Germany's system of education.

The federal government also controls the financing of stipends and educational allowances and the promotion of research and support of young scientists through fellowships.

Most teachers and university-level professors are civil servants with life tenure and high standing in society.

They receive generous fringe benefits and relatively lucrative compensation, while making no contributions to social security programmes. In Bavaria, for example, the average starting salary for an elementary or secondary school teacher in 2005 was about {euro}60,000. A senior teacher in a Gymnasium earned about {euro}80,000.

According to the terms of the Düsseldorf Treaty of 1955 — the first major attempt to unify or coordinate the school systems of the states — school attendance is mandatory for a minimum of ten years, beginning at age six.

Unlike in the US, the UK or, in India, mainland Europe does not have a group of elite universities. None enjoys a reputation for greater overall excellence than is enjoyed by the others.

Instead, particular departments of some universities are commonly seen as very good in their field. For example, the University of Cologne has a noted economics faculty.

Freedom to Learn

Adam Smith, after a lengthy stay in pre-revolutionary France where he had met Voltaire, D´Alembert, and some renowned physiocrats, had this to say: "... It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages."

The same holds true for an education system. The freedom to learn is a basic human right. And by expanding this freedom to learn we strengthen democracy, encourage prosperity and inspire new intellectual thought and inquiry.

With apologies to Mark Twain Europe has ensured that the words `education' and `miserable' need never be mentioned in the same breath.

On the contrary, education is seen in Europe as the principal tool for coping with the uncertainty implicit in a world where people at every stage of their lives can welcome change.

(The author, a former Europe Director, CII, lives in Cologne, Germany. Feedback may be sent to mohan.murti@t-online.de)