The curse of the elite university

University of Pennsylvania’s Psi Upsilon Fraternity

There are many things converging between Europe and America these days. In the last few decades Europe has become more free market, more assertive and more racially segregated, all traits generally more associated with America. And America has itself become more secular, more progressive with an ever growing welfare sector. Rumor even has it that Americans these days play real football instead of that indigenous American game where men in yoga pants throw a rugby ball forward.

One thing still separates Americans from Europeans (or rather Anglosaxons from continentals, actually): the existence of the elite university. In America, a lot of teenage pressure and parental angst seem to be directed towards the task of getting into the very best universities. For good reason, the university you attend will in no small part affect the general outcome of your life, as this study shows (ironically it is from an Italian university).

This single-minded focus is somewhat perplexing to a European since in Europe it is very different. My own academic history is as good an example as any of the European style of higher education.

Swedish engineering

After high school I chose to pursue a career in engineering, mostly due to a lack of imagination. The best engineering school in Sweden, the MIT of Sweden so to speak, is the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm (alumni of Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg might have an opinion here but since they have no “royal” in their name their argument is kind of moot). I studied there for two years before I dropped out. Was I proud to have gotten a place at the best technical college in Sweden? Not particularly. For a very simple reason: Anyone applying to the Royal Institute of Technology is welcomed, at least as long as they are EU citizens with a valid high school diploma. 

Sweden has an interesting relation to engineers and engineering education which might not make it the best example. Simply put, Sweden loves engineers and makes available as many positions at technical universities as needed and then some. Fascinatingly, 15% of each Swedish cohort will start an engineering education and more than 7% will receive an engineering degree (source in Swedish). Not all Swedish educations are as easy to enter as engineering, but most are.

This is the norm all across Europe. University education is supposed to be attainable to all. This means that universities are tuition free. But it also means that university education should be open to those with less than stellar academic grades. The European solution is to supply as many university places as is needed to saturate demand. In France they even have a law allowing anyone to attend any university education they like. If demand for one particular education is high, the university is obliged to create more places (usually by moving the relevant courses to larger facilities, but if that fails by simply cramming more people than physically possible into the lecture hall).

Top flight removed

I have to admit that my knowledge of the American university system is quite skimpy. I have no personal experience and I do not even know anyone who has attended college or university in America. The existence in Europe of the very successful Erasmus student exchange programme means that European students get paid (not that much) for studying at universities in other European countries while having to pay (quite a lot) to study at an American university. Naturally most of us (myself included) opt for the European alternative.

Anyway, what I do know of the American university system is that there are private and public universities. And while many of the private universities are world famous they are also ridiculously small. MIT might be the world’s best technical university, but it has less than half the number of undergraduate students compared to the Royal Institute of Technology. They can remain this small precisely because they are private. They have no public pressure to expand their world-class education for the benefit of society.

While private universities in America are small and selective, the public universities are as vast as any in Europe. A quick look at Wikipedia informs me that Stanford University, a very successful private university in California, has less than 8000 undergraduate students. The public University of California has almost 300,000.

In fact it seems like Europe and America are quite similar even in the area of university education, except for the presence of a handful of highly prestigious private universities in America. This handful of private universities seems to have an outsize influence on the American system of higher education. But, first, how can they even compete with the public giants?

Small and beautiful

There are private universities in Europe as well. In Sweden there is only one (that I know of): Stockholm School of Economics. This school is private, small and educates an outsized share of the Swedish business elite (and Sweden’s current but election losing prime minister). It is also competitive, only admitting one fifth of all applicants.

But it is not a requisite for a successful career. Plenty of successful Swedish businessmen and economists have had their education at public universities (like the current but soon to be replaced Swedish finance minister and also his proposed replacement). There is simply not much difference between the private university and its public counterparts.

The reason for this is quite simple. They both play on the exact same playing field. In Sweden, like in most of the EU, university education is tuition free and funded from the public purse. A private university like Stockholm School of Economics can not charge tuition if it wants to keep its government funding and thus has more or less the same resources as the public universities. The result is that there is practically no difference in the quality of education in private and public universities.

There are still good reasons for a Swedish youngster to apply to the Stockholm School of Economics instead of the public University of Stockholm. It is more prestigious to have attended the Stockholm School of Economics  and you will probably get to know more high-achievers than at a public university. But it is no catastrophe if you take the public route. Your future is still before you and all doors are still open to you.

A childhood of competition

What this means in practice is that Swedish youngsters, and their parents, do not have to worry very much about their future until they actually enter university. This is a significant difference from America where every middle class parent seems to be agonizing over their kid’s prospects for getting into the right college.

In Sweden there is virtually no competition at all until high school and even there it is very limited since you will have to work quite hard not to get a place at a decent university. Contrast this with America where competition starts more or less in kindergarten.

The American admission system is cruel in more ways than starting competition early. Since American colleges do not only rate applicants on their academic merits, more or less everything American youths do is graded or rated in some indirect way. Since your university admission is affected by your sport talents, your musical prowess and your general social skills and activity level, everything you do before your university admission in some way affects your future career. Throwing that baseball is not just for fun if your baseball throwing skill is the little grain that tips the scales at the admissions board in your favor. 

In Sweden, and the rest of Europe, as far as I know, it is different. Mostly because universities are not allowed to handle their own admissions. Instead everything is done through a centralized admissions system which disregards everything except high school grades or SAT scores. You can throw as many baseballs as you want, it will not affect your chances of getting into university one single bit.

In practice this means that European children are free to have their childhood for themselves. Their future is not dependent on which kindergarten they attended or what they do in their spare time. They can do better or worse during their first 18 years of life, but whatever they do will be overshadowed by their performance at university and in their future working lives. 

Adult competition

Of course there is competition in Sweden as well. After all, the number of elite positions in society is limited and if you want one of them you will have to be better than the rest in some way. But in general, this competition does not start until university. When everyone can start a university education the real mark of success is who can finish a university education.

This is one of the explanations for the popularity of engineering. A degree in engineering might not be that useful in itself, but since it is a difficult education, an engineering degree is proof that the person holding it is a disciplined worker with high cognitive abilities. Hence, many Swedish engineers do not work in engineering at all, I know several who work in finance. Even better than a degree in a difficult subject is several degrees in as difficult subjects as possible. A tried and tested way to a stellar career in Swedish business is studying in parallel for a master’s in engineering and a master’s in business administration. Only the most studious can succeed in something like that, which means that it is a great way of distinguishing you from the rest.

A soft spot for the soft sciences

There is one obvious disadvantage of the Swedish system of rewarding status according to difficulty. Easier subjects automatically become lower status. And since easy subjects have a tendency to belong to the soft sciences, these subjects have very low status in Sweden.

In America people can study anthropology, linguistics, history or arts without risking their future careers. At least if they have already proved their mettle by being admitted to an elite private university. If you choose any of these subjects in Sweden you will forever be marked as lazy, stupid or simply unambitious. Naturally, this attitude deters the best and brightest students from ever applying.

Although I can not back this up with any hard numbers I believe this shows in the research output. Sweden has some decent researchers in engineering, medicine, the natural sciences and, to a lesser degree, in economics. Incidentally the same areas where it is prestigious to study. America has great researchers in every subject, since in America all subjects are prestigious when you study them at the right university.

These days the soft sciences are not doing too well in America either. More due to woke ideology than lack of competent applicants. But it highlights the trade-offs involved when designing a system of higher education. 

America has some of the world’s best universities, of that there can be no doubt. Their superiority is in no small part due to the fact that they can choose the best and the brightest of America’s vast population of undergraduates. This is a winning formula both for the elite universities and its elite graduates. 

For society as a whole it is probably not as beneficial. Huge resources are spent navigating the admissions system. Talents that for some reason were not admitted to the top institutions will have a hard time proving themselves and might be wasted. Most of all, it condemns Americans to a childhood of performance anxiety. That is a heavy price to pay for a few world-class research universities.

The idea for this article was originally Tove’s. She even wrote a draft of it which, unfortunately, was bad enough to not warrant further editing. Instead I took it upon myself to rewrite the entire article, which also gave the opportunity to add some personal examples from my own stellar academic career.