[link|http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/12/11/europe.braindrain.reut/index.html|The fiends!]

Excerpt:

LONDON (Reuters) -- Europe's leading scientists criticized the European Union's science policies, calling for reforms and more funding to curb further brain drain to the United States.

"It is important to realize that the United States is dramatically more successful than the EU in attracting young talents at the post-doc (post-doctoral) level from all parts of the world," the presidents of 10 European science academies said in a letter this week to the European Council of EU leaders.

The letter, obtained by Reuters, was signed by Lord May of Oxford, president of Britain's Royal Society; Hubert Curien, president of France's l'Academie des Sciences; and Janne Carlsson, president of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

It was sent to the current EU president, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, before a December 12-13 EU summit in Copenhagen. The letter urges a summit debate on how the EU could become more competitive and stem the outflow of its scientists.

It said more funding and reforms were needed beyond current goals to reduce a widening gap in research and development spending between the EU and other members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

I say:

Well, they know they have a problem and are trying, in their own clumsy, collectivist way, to address it. But obviously they haven't grasped the full implications. Instead of just throwing money and bureaucracy at the problem, they need to ask themselves (sincerely) how this situation came to be in the first place. But if they were capable of that, then they'd be almost... American.

Excerpt 2:

The EU should copy the U.S. university system and become more open, efficient and flexible, letting government spending focus on basic research and leaving the business sector to take care of development and applied research, it said.

I say:

Okay, that's a bit more like it. They still haven't got at the root of the difference, but they're one level below the surface at least. Just don't emulate our English departments. Those gibberish-spewing tenure monkeys have absolutely nothing to do with our success. At anything. Oh, and don't emulate NASA as it currently exists. That model only works well during certain phases of a cold war.

The real irony is that "entrepreneur" was originally a French word. Go figure.