Leading Article: A wind of change in Europe

Universities in mainland Europe are smarting about the international league tables compiled by the likes of Times Higher Education in London and Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China. These show American universities as the most successful research powerhouses in the world, with the United Kingdom also doing remarkably well. The European Commission is well aware of the causes: the dead hand of state control means that Continental universities have found it difficult to innovate.

Moreover, they have been starved of resources, which shows up in substandard laboratories and libraries – and a high undergraduate drop-out rate. European observers, who gathered last week at a journalists' conference organised by the Centre International d'Etudes Pédagogiques in Paris, preferred to contrast the American model of higher education, which they describe as competitive, with the European model, dubbed "cooperative".

The plan is for mainland Europe to develop rankings of universities, based on its values and covering each subject and region. French and German experts hope that will enable the world to see that their universities can be successful, too, and that overseas students will be attracted to Europe when they access these rankings on a web portal.