Terms such as "demographic and economic contraction,""decreasing resources,""no-growth," and "decline" indicate changes in educational resource allocations. While some experts from Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries complain about reduced education budgets, others assert that the industrialized world economies have recovered and are relatively stable. Patterns of planned responses to changing resources vary in the European community. This paper examines some prevailing problems and how they are being solved. One exception to European recovery is England, where Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's government froze teacher and professor salaries, causing a catastrophic shortage of science teachers. The main austerity problem in western Europe involves decreasing population, specifically birth rates that have declined by one-third over the past decade. The educational consequences are (1) superannuated teaching staff with long-term contracts and few retraining opportunities; (2) reduced financial allocations; and (3) decreasing enrollment in teacher colleges. Responses can be enacted according to sectoral, overall, or longitudinal resources reductions (funds, time, or personnel) and usually occur in combination. This paper identifies response patterns according to strategic choices (continuing system-based efforts, reallocating money to priority areas, mobilizing community and private resources, and stabilizing external support) and illustrates each choice with specific examples. Efforts to overcome the negative impact of resource shortages depend chiefly on institutionalized opportunities supporting creative problem-solving and risk-taking. Included are 19 references. (MLH)