Higher aspirations: an agenda for reforming European universities

EUROPEAN UNIVERSITIES A EUROPEAN HIGHER EDUCATION SPACE
2.2.3 The matching of students to institutions
Fiscal jurisdictions and the geographical perimeter of mobility
Institutions of higher education in Europe are driven by public funding. Yet there is
not one single fiscal jurisdiction. Each state (or, in some cases, sub-state entities)
funds its own higher education system.
Within the EU, states may not exclude students from other fiscal jurisdictions. And,
indeed, there is some, albeit modest, degree of mobility of students across EU
countries (see Figure 3), which goes some way towards preventing the European
Space of Higher Education from being simply a juxtaposition of isolated national (or
sub-national) systems.
In theory, the lack of concordance between the fiscal jurisdiction (typically the
nation state, at times the regions) and the space of permissible mobility of students
(the European Union) risks generating problems of the free riding or fiscal competition-type.
So far, however, these problems have been small at the undergraduate level
because, especially if we exclude short-term, Erasmus-like exchanges, mobility at
this level remains very limited in Europe 7 .
In fact, the low level of mobility at undergraduate level should not be viewed as an
anomaly. Even in the United States, mobility of undergraduate students is relatively
low.
Limited mobility is likely to persist even after the Bologna process is fully implemented.
For one thing, countrywide specialisation in undergraduate curricula is not likely
to emerge, since there is no prospect of increasing returns to encourage it. On the
other hand, Bologna could in principle result in an increase in student mobility across
countries if it induces an increase in qualitative differences. However, a more likely
scenario is that the creation of the ESHE will result in convergence of the quality of
undergraduate education among countries. In a more transparent landscape, where
good practice and performance become more visible, public opinion is more likely to
demand better public policy.
7. There have been highly-publicised specific exceptions linked to the limitation of access to some degrees (eg in
medicine and related fields) in some countries (namely, France and Germany), with students then flocking to
countries without such limitation (namely, Belgium and Austria). For an analysis of this issue, see Gérard
(2007).
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