By Jody K. Biehl

Why doesn't Germany have a Harvard? Does Oxford measure up to Stanford? And why is there no Euro Ivy League? Europeans are increasingly asking these questions and are not liking the answers they are getting. The truth is, their once vaunted universities are languishing, continually losing ground to their slicker, more elite American cousins.

The reason is simple: money. American universities roll in wealth and it allows them to build top-notch libraries and laboratories and to lure the world's most brilliant thinkers to their corridors and famous green lawns. They also have rich, ferociously loyal alumni and polished fundraising machines that remind graduates that it's their duty to give, say, half a million to their old alma mater. By comparison, Europe -- but especially Germany with its buildings in disrepair and steadfast belief in free education for all -- is scruffy, indeed.

That may soon change -- at least a little.

The German Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe is currently considering the (shocking!) idea of allowing Germany's federal states to charge tuition. The amount? Up to a whopping €500 ($640) per semester. Compared to America, where elite universities cost about $26,000 a year (with room and board the total is more like $38,000) the discussion is laughable. But for Germans, where the 1960s dream of free education for the masses lives on, even the suggestion of paying to study borders on the blasphemous.

"How can they think of charging us?" asked Anja Schillhaneck, an education student at Berlin's Technical University. "First of all students in Europe have no money. And our universities are not exactly comparable to Harvard or Berkeley. Just look at our libraries. They are falling apart. Our classes, our professors, you just can't compare them or expect us to pay for what we get."

The tuition discussion has been in the air for years in Germany. Late last year a number of states slashed public funding to universities and pledged to introduce tuition fees. Mass student demonstrations ensued in November and December of 2003 with students insisting doomsday for German education had arrived. The brouhaha led to the current case before the Consitutional Court.

Why do Germans pay for Kindergarten but not for College?

Professor Peter Glotz, a long-time Social Democratic Party leader and the author of the 1996 book "Rotten to the Core: Five Minutes to Midnight for German Universities," believes tuition will help more than hurt bedraggled institutions. If students are forced to pay up a little, they will be more invested in their institutions and will take studying more seriously, he said. Tuition would also bolster university coffers a little -- although it certainly would not put them on par with American universities.

Just to compare: last year, Harvard University -- which employs 600 fundraisers -- raised $500 million. And that is in addition to tuition charges. Columbia University has a budget of $2.6 billion. The budget of Berlin's Free University? A scant $350 million.

"Why is it that in Germany we pay up to €400 for kindergarten but for university studies we pay nothing," said Glotz, who now heads the Institute for Media and Communications Management in St. Gallen, Switzerland, in an interview with the daily Berliner Zeitung. "That's absurd, isn't it?"

Another suggestion to help straggling German universities is to infuse five to 10 so-called "elite" schools with extra cash and boost them to top status by 2012. A group of federal and regional representatives met Monday to figure out how such a plan might work. The answer? Money again. The idea is to give the selected universities a collective infusion of €1.9 billion.

A quick comparison shows why the money is so necessary. A study released last week by the London Times' Education Supplement rated the top 200 universities worldwide. Only one German university made it to the top 50. It was Germany's best -- the University of Heidelberg -- where Max Weber, the founder of modern sociology once studied and where Hannah Arendt coined the phrase "the banality of evil." It's rating? 47th.

France scored almost as badly, with its renowned Ecole Polytechnique landing in 27th place and the elite Ecole Normale Superieure, the stomping ground of most French politicians, coming in at 30th. Top honors went to America, which nabbed seven of the top ten slots. Harvard placed first, Berkeley second, MIT third, Caltech fourth. England's Oxford University and Cambridge -- where tuition fees of as much as $5,550 per year will be charged as of 2006 -- snagged fifth and sixth place. Separate surveys by U.S. News and World Report and by the University of Shanghai came up with similar results.

Another litmus test for a country's academic prowess is the number of Nobel Prizes its researchers win. Here's the tally: In the first third of the 20th century, Germany produced 25 Nobel winners in chemistry and physics alone -- the most in the world. But, between 1984 and 2003, Americans won 10 times as many Nobel Prizes as Germans. Until the 1970s, England won about one fifth of all Nobel prizes for science. Now, it wins less than one-tenth.

In short, while Europe lags, America flourishes. US researchers now receive 75 percent of all Nobel Prizes. Seven hundred of the world's 1,200 most-cited researchers live and work in the US, according to the English daily Financial Times.

Einstein and Paris Hilton in the Same Classroom

Does that mean Europe -- but especially Germany -- is anxious to follow the American example? Hardly. Instead, it is kicking and clawing to protect its belief that free education is a human right. "Tuition has been proven to frighten away students," said Joerg Tauss, a Social Democratic member of the German parliament who specializes in education issues. "It's not only those from poor backgrounds who don't come and are underrepresented at the university. It's also middle class students who shy from the costs and risks of studying." That, he said, is too often what happens in America. Tauss prepared a 17-page argument outlining his opposition to tuition fees.

The truth is, European students have a pretty easy ride -- which may explain their opposition to change. Not only can they choose their subject and how long they study (some go for eight years or more), but also in most cases, where they study. That's because most German universities oppose the sort of rigorous selection process that allows places like Harvard and Stanford to fill their halls with the smartest students. Such an equality-based system is laudable in theory, but in essence fosters a process that protects the weakest rather than rewards the best. In the name of fairness, German universities insure that a young Albert Einstein would be put in the same class as Paris Hilton.