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Comment by bbojan | Hacker News Reader

Swiss type deal isn't working for the Swiss anymore. EU was putting pressure on the Swiss to accept a comprehensive deal to replace the dozens of agreements that they have. When the Swiss refused, the EU simple lets one by one pass without renewing them.

This has e.g. happened with the Horizon Europe research program which Switzerland is no longer part of.

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> This has e.g. happened with the Horizon Europe research program which Switzerland is no longer part of.

That’s so self-destructive - surely the EU needs Switzerland’s powerful universities more than Switzerland needs Horizon?

The other way round..

Don’t you think the Swiss out more into Horizon than they got out?

My understanding was that the EU has many universities.

They’re not anywhere near where the Swiss universities are if you look at the rankings.

That is true, but I believe this to be irrelevant for what is happening. Switzerland is not funding the shortfall which means that for researchers the game has changed as a result that topic is hot in Switzerland still, in the EU not.

In the UK at least the "world class" universities do nothing for the native population and very little for the country in general.

Their primary reason for existence now is for rich foreigners (mainly from China and the middle east) to give their kids a status symbol education, this includes not failing bad students because the fees are so high.

The only people to benefit from this is are the University leadership and the property developers that build luxury accommodation for all the rich students.

I'm not sure if it is that bad in Switzerland. If they properly fund higher education for native citizens maybe not.

I just looked, US News ranked ETH Zurich as #29 globally, but Univ. of Amsterdam is #39, Univ. of Copenhagen is #42, and then ten more European[0] universities before getting to the Univ. of Zurich at #67 overall. I scrolled down a ways further but didn't see any more Swiss universities listed.

[0] I excluded the UK but I'm not going to check which Nordic countries are EU members.

It's well-known that the US News rankings have their problems, but it seems like they'd have to be really out of the ordinary in order to support your claims.

If you look at international research rankings rather than US college rankings (because it's about Horizon) it's very different.

https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-un...

Only one EU in the top 50.

Switzerland is also land locked by the EU. Surely Switzerland needs trucks with food, fuel, construction, raw materials and other essential imports, coming in on a regular basis more than the EU needs Switzerland's universities. You can't eat money or live in a house built from research papers to survive.

I'm not saying EU would ever do something that radical, but my point is, the EU has far more screws to turn on Switzerland in case of a diplomatic conflict, than vice versa.

Which is why Switzerland tightened their banking secrecy regulations at the insistence of the EU despite Switzerland not being beholden to EU laws.

Yeah but why turn the screw with Horizon? The Swiss input far more into Horizon than they got out - more damaging to the EU than the Swiss - should have turned another screw.

I have no idea of the Horizon situation, i was just explaining the leverage imbalance.

> That’s so self-destructive - surely the EU needs Switzerland’s powerful universities more than Switzerland needs Horizon?

Switzerland in practical terms needs the EU more than the EU needs Switzerland. The current situation is suboptimal for both sides obviously, but from the EU side you can mostly ignore that discourse.

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