The Americanization of European Higher Education and Research

Over the past two decades there has been a substantial increase in the mobility ofstudents in Europe, while also research has become much more internationallyoriented. In this paper we document changes in the structure of research and highereducation in Europe and investigate potential explanations for the strong increase inits international orientation. While higher education started to grow substantiallyaround 1960, only a few decades later, research and higher education transformedgradually to the American standard. Decreased communication costs are likely causesfor this trend. Th is transformation is most clearly revealed in the change of languageused in research from the national language, Latin, German and French to English.Smaller language areas made this transformation earlier while there are also cleartiming diff erences between research fi elds. Sciences and medicine tend to switch toEnglish fi rst, followed by economics and social sciences, while for law and arts onlythe fi rst signs of such a transformation are currently observed. Th is suggests thatreturns to scale and the transferability of research results are important infl uences inthe decision to adopt the international standard.