... [I]f you wanted to examine parts of European life that yearn to be world class, but are determined to hold out against market forces and the laws of competition, the continent's universities would be a good place to start. They are cherished national champions, often funded and usually controlled by the state, and sometimes crammed with political appointees. In much of “old Europe”, universities give a valuable product—degrees—away more or less for free. That is a pretty effective way of avoiding consumer pressure. They are further shielded from competition by such things as tradition, national pride and language.

[The] EU (quite properly) has no powers to regulate education policy. Alas, in much of Europe, that means subsidies, micro-management and legally backed monopolies that govern the way universities are run. Small wonder that many famous names are shadows of their former selves.

... In Sweden ... academics are squabbling over calls to match their marking schemes with standardised Euro-grades, from A (excellent) to F for Fail. Students risk psychological harm, they fret, if visibly labelled successes and failures. Much better to stick with a two-level system of pass and fail, or (if you will insist on such elitism) one extra level of “pass with distinction” for the top quartile. Jacob Christensen, a political scientist at a Swedish university, Umea, suggested recently that Swedes “are expected to descend into deep psychological disorder as soon as they encounter disappointments in everyday life”.

... In Finland, Karl-Erik Michelsen of Lappeenranta University complains of a “big social-democratic project to create a massive number of people with master's degrees.” The result, he says, is that “quantity overrides quality." ...