The Brain in Spain
UD has written quite a lot about the rotten European university system, with special attention to Greece, Italy, and France. Here are excerpts from a report on Spain, in the Chronicle of Higher Education:
...[N]ot a single Spanish institution ranks among top 100 world universities, and ... only three rank even among the 100 best in Europe, in sharp contrast with more dynamic sectors of Spanish society.
"Universities are an anomaly in Spain," says Eduardo Costas Costas, a professor of genetics and animal science at the Complutense. "Business has changed, the military has changed. ... Our banks compete with the United States. And our scientists are talented. But the structures they work in are not competitive."
...[Spain's]... system rewards political skill and connections over academic merit. Miguel Camblor, who studies materials science at the research council in Madrid, participated in a recent conference on "Harassment and Corruption in the Spanish Public University." He likens his nation's higher-education system to preindustrial southern Spain, with academic potentates dominating their departments the way feudal lords once did their landed estates.
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