Despite the EU’s ambitious goals with respect to higher education, European universities are facing a wave of cutbacks. A new report by the European University Association (EUA) shows an increasingly negative impact of the economic crisis on national higher education systems. The EUA report points to growing fears of a second wave of cuts in the coming months. Faced with the cuts, the EUA is calling on EU governments to commit to reaching the Barcelona target of 3% of GDP investment in research and the more recent 2% of GDP target for investment in higher education proposed by the European Commission.

The embarrassing report was issued as research and innovation ministers meet in Brussels, on 26 May. Latvia, for example, after an initial cut of 48% in higher education funding in 2009, is now axing a further 18% in 2010. The EUA additionally points to heavy cuts of 5% to 10% in Italy over three years as well as to reduced financing in Ireland, the UK, Estonia, Lithuania and Romania. Cuts of up to 5% have also been registered in the Czech Republic and Poland as well as in several candidate countries in South-Eastern Europe, notably in Croatia and Serbia.

The EUA’s report further stresses that some governments are going back on commitments to increase higher education funding. One good example is Hungary, where the government has cancelled 2007 plans to increase overall university funding. This now means Hungarian universities will have 15% less financial support to play with than expected. Belgium’s Flemish community is also blocking a previously promised increase of some 10%.

“For universities to play their full role in helping European economies out of recession, politicians must commit to major public investment in higher education and research,” said the EUA in a statement. The association even calls for European “stimulus” packages to create opportunities and incentives for young researchers, lifelong learning and upgrading university facilities and campus infrastructure.

Exemplary France and Germany

Germany and France are among the small number of countries that have kept promises. The German federal government is providing an additional 800 million euro to support growing student numbers until 2015. The federal government is also to invest a further 2.7 billion euro between 2012 and 2015 into a German excellence initiative and is providing a funding increase of 5% per year until 2015 for an innovation and research pact. France has increased overall higher education funding by investing almost 30 billion euro in 2010 into key priority areas. Some 11 billion euro goes to improving higher education quality and eight billion euro to developing research. The remaining funds go to creating or restructuring university campuses.