Private education: will Europe be overtaken?

The Economist believe that Europe's state-run universities cannot compete:

America is not the only competition Europe faces in the knowledge economy. Emerging countries have cottoned on to the idea of working smarter as well as harder. Singapore is determined to turn itself into a “knowledge island”. India is sprucing up its institutes of technology. In the past decade China has doubled the size of its student population while pouring vast resources into elite universities. Forget about catching up with America; unless Europeans reform their universities, they will soon be left in the dust by Asia as well.

The idea of charging fees for university places remains hugely controversial in Europe, despite the fact that subsidising higher education is demonstrably regressive in many countries.