Restoration of the Knowledge Economy to Restore Infrastructure and Trade

The root cause of Europe’s crisis lies in the unsustainable debt and liquidity problems resulting from the incompatibilities of maintaining a single trans-national currency while continuing individual nation-based economic policies. The predicament of this crisis is diverse and includes a significant reduction of investment in its educational system. This, in turn has resulted in an equally important debt in the “knowledge currency”. Indeed, the economic crisis has made clearer that higher education has relevance to and value for individuals and society. Europe will likely emerge from this ongoing monetary crisis through a combination of financial and political actions. However, these actions will likely be only of a transient nature that would not address many of the fundamental underpinnings of the crisis. A more enduring change would be dependent upon restoring economic and trade infrastructures through enhanced, specialized education particularly in the technical and information areas. The key to this is the expansion of the existing trans-Atlantic collaborations with US institutions of higher learning. U.S. institutions have been fortunate to have weathered the global recession relatively unscathed. They have been in a position to quickly embrace emerging technologies while developing new ones that can positively influence a nation’s economy. Cooperation to exploit these assets can help restore and re-define EU knowledge economy to better respond to the challenges of globalization and the agglomeration of research that have been exacerbated by the financial and economic crisis.