[填空题]How Europe fails its young
Those Europeans who are tempted, in the light of the dismal scenes in New Orleans this fortnight, to downgrade the American challenge should meditate on one word: universities. Five years ago in Lisbon European officials proclaimed their intention to become the world’s premier "knowledge economy" by 2010. The thinking behind this grand declaration made sense of a sort: Europe’s only chance of preserving its living standards lies in working smarter than its competitors rather than harder or cheaper. But Europe’s failing higher-education system poses a lethal threat to this ambition.
Europe created the modem university. Scholars were gathering in Paris and Bologna before America was on the map. Oxford and Cambridge invented the residential university: the idea of a community of scholars, living together to pursue higher learning. Germany created the research university. A century ago European universities were a magnet for scholars and a mo