Most of the baltic states and former soviet republics are part of NATO now. Rather than asking whether there was a tacit agreement on spheres of influence at the time the Berlin wall fell, it might be worth asking why those countries so unanimously prefer closer ties to the EU and NATO over Russia. I think that money is part of the answer, but not in the way that you're implying.
This is interesting, and now I have a new book on my reading list. Yay!
But I think that the author's solution is superficial; it would be fine if nobody approached higher education itself with external motivators. But degrees are often a first-pass screen on a path to high-paying jobs which usually involve a certain amount of responsibility. They need to vouch for a certain level of competence in a subject area, otherwise what's the point? If you take grades and tests out of universities and just hand out degrees for participation, doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of having them in the first place?
In a nutshell, if we followed this author's advice and depended on the students developing an intrinsic motivation for learning, people with the external motivation of making money would not be deterred - if anything they would be encouraged. So I think this author misses the context that higher education exists in.