Public Education in an Integrated Europe: Studying for Migration and Teaching for Staying?

Both current and especially new member states of the European Union face incentives to distort the provision of public education away from internationally applicable education towards country-specific skills. This would mean educating too few engineers, economists and doctors, and too many lawyers. Such an outcome could be avoided by introducing graduate taxes or income-contingent loans, collected also from migrants. By giving the providers of internationally applicable education a stake also in efficiency gains earned elsewhere, graduate taxes would encourage member states to invest more in internationally applicable education.