No european summit can conclude nowadays without I talking up plans to make Europe the most competitive "knowledge-based" economy in the world. EU leaders' fondness for this notion, first expressed in Lisbon four years ago, is understandable. Asians pay themselves less than Europeans, and Americans work longer hours—what option is left for the old continent but to rely on its intellectual resources? There is one big snag, however. One of Europe's primary intellectual resources, its university system, is in terrible shape. Just how terrible was underlined in the recent annual survey by Shanghai's Jiao Tong University of the world's universities. This ranking gave eight of the top ten places to American institutions, with only Oxford and Cambridge breaking the American monopoly. You had to get down to 39th before an EU university outside Britain (the University of Utrecht) featured.
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