Word: european
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Even Sweden and Finland, long defenders of high taxes and socialism for the greater good, have decided to start charging non-European Union students tuition to study in their countries. "There is a huge debate in Sweden now about tuition fees," says Robin Moberg, vice chair of the Swedish National Union of Students. "On the one hand, the government has said foreign students shouldn't be supported by our taxes, but our argument has been that higher education is fundamentally a part of society...
...dramatic cuts have come in Eastern Europe, particularly in Latvia, where the government has cut public funding for higher education in half since 2008. Poland, Hungary and Estonia have all cut or plan to make cuts of between 4% and 7%. But it's not just the east - wealthier European nations are also feeling the bite. This month, Britain announced cuts as high as 14% to some university budgets, while both Italian and Spanish schools face reductions of about 10%. The situation is so bad in Spain that schools extended holiday breaks last year to save money on heating, water...
...year. However, experts caution that budget increases on this scale can't last in the economic downturn. "If one follows the announcements of the government, it looks as if universities should not suffer so much," says Dr. Paul Flather, head of the Europaeum, a U.K.-based association of 10 European universities. "But in practice, talking to professors and our colleagues there, the picture doesn't look so healthy...
Despite the fact that most European economies are officially growing again, the effects of the recession are only just beginning to hit national budgets, Estermann says. Though countries like France might not be willing to make sweeping changes to their education systems yet, incremental changes over the next several years could produce a wholly different picture of education in the future. "The crisis is not over. We will need to wait some time to see what's really going to happen in some countries," Estermann says. "Even those who do not cut now will come under pressure in the future...
...funding crisis in European higher education is unlikely to improve anytime soon. "There's quite a lot of anxiety in the system," Flather says, cautioning that short-term cuts will have long-lasting effects on universities. Undermining these "engines of democracy," he adds, could end up being more costly than people think - not in terms of dollars and cents, but in the future well-being of European societies. "We're part of the future, we're part of recovery," he says...