With my research, I found out that European universities are going through budgetary problems just like American universities did before the privatization and higher tuition costs. Especially now, the financial crisis in Europe is pushing governments to adopt budget cuts, of which education is an apparent victim. I am curious as to how European institutions will deal with lack of public funding. These two cultures, European and American, are different in that American culture promotes individualism further than Europeans do; this is most apparent in education where students are to fend for themselves in the US while European students benefit from publicly funded education. In Seeking New Resources for European Universities, it is argued that increasing tuition costs is out of the question for most European universities because of egalitarian reasons. It brings up fundraising as an alternate way to make up for loss of public funding. In Comparing the German and American Systems, Robert Locke talks about the evolution of American education system, citing lack of state guidance, which he claims was new to Americans. My research seems to have shifted my topic to the evolution of American higher education system. I am curious about the reasons for how it turned out.
1) Mora, Jose-Gines, and Michael Nugent. "Seeking New Resources For European Universities: The Example Of Fund-Raising In The US." European Journal Of Education 33.1 (1998): 113. Academic Search Premier. Web. 30 Sept. 2012. http://ehis.ebscohost.com.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/ehost/detail?vid=4&hid=103&sid=bfc072b5-c525-4960-b39b-07c7b59adebf%40sessionmgr114&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=aph&AN=373137
2)Locke, Robert R. "Comparing The German And American Systems." Business History Review 82.2 (2008): 336-342. Academic Search Premier. Web. 30 Sept. 2012.
http://ehis.ebscohost.com.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=bfc072b5-c525-4960-b39b-07c7b59adebf%40sessionmgr114&vid=8&hid=103
Hamdi --
ReplyDeleteI like your original topic, to discuss the ways that privatization has begun to take hold in Europe due to the Euro crisis -- and the way the European resistance to privatization highlights the differences between the two western university systems. I think this could lead to a more interesting paper than a report on the history of American higher education. The first article you cite looks interesting, and it is interesting that Europe never developed a strong sense of alumni and donor support for higher education because of the way that the state always supported it. Certainly that offers one alternative to simply raising tuition, which has been very unpopular there. I think your project might be to show what inroads privatization has made in Europe and what the future might hold.