One surprising fact I noticed in the Shanghai Ranking (refer to earlier blog) was that the poor performance of European universities. Mind you these were the universities which at the turn of the century contributed to growth of science and maths in all forms and definitely were the leaders. But now US universities are dominating in all respects.
Looking for clues and what is happening I got this link http://www.bruegel.org/Public/Publication_detail.php?ID=1169&publicationID=4618. I would recommend those interested to go through it as it is not highly theoretical and is in plain language. The summary is that European Universities are in need of nearly 1% of their education costs additional in higher educations. They also need badly better governance and reformation. Though the study on universities does not consider the independent research centres which are prime research centres in Germany and so skews the result, there is a need for funding and reformation in European universities.
