Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

Traditional funding patterns for universities are changing across Europe, as a response to societal and economic developments. In a context of enhanced competition for public resources, funding efficiency in large sectors such as higher education and research, which in Europe relies heavily on public support, is becoming a more pressing political objective. Public authorities are eager to get more for the money invested in universities. Since 2008, the economic situation of many European countries has significantly deteriorated, and authorities are often expecting more outputs with less money as EUA’s annual Public Funding Observatory shows. Apart from steering universities through funding modalities, many systems engage in some degree of restructuring the higher education landscape in order to rationalise costs, increase visibility and altogether boost international competitiveness of their higher education institutions. The present analysis is drawn from the DEFINE project on funding efficiency in higher education, which provides data and recommendations supporting the improved design and implementation of university funding mechanisms and thereby contributing to enhanced funding efficiency in the sector. The present article focuses on three main thematic pillars: (i) an analysis of funding modalities for universities in Europe, with a particular focus on the spread of performance-based funding mechanisms; (ii) an exploration of funding mechanisms to foster excellence, often specific initiatives outside of the regular financial framework in which universities operate; (iii) a review of operational efficiency measures implemented within and between universities.

The future of mankind depends largely on cultural, scientific and technical development; and that this is built up in centres of culture, knowledge and research as represented by true universities. National states have the necessity and obligation to guarantee the access to financial means for a healthy functioning of universities—even if this is not a direct state support. European tradition from the 18th century for financing universities was donation of properties to the institutions and direct state support. This tradition has changed from the last quarter of the 20th century on, due to a low level of financing HEIs. The situation is most dramatic in Eastern European post-communist EHEA countries, where properties were confiscated and state support is rather scarce due to the bad economic situation. Though research grants have been more or less available, their amount does not cope with the infrastructural necessities and the costs of human resources. As a result, university research in the region is much less competitive compared to the more advantageous (Western) universities. Documents of the European Research Area declared that the number of talented researchers should be the same regardless of the geographical situation, thus it is also the interest of ERA (and EHEA) to help support this handicapped region. A joint and concerted effort of national and European authorities is necessary to help the Eastern European post-communist EHEA countries to catch up with the intensity of university research and become real members of the European university community also in this respect.

The question addressed here is whether and how the increase of research funding in higher education leads to a higher scientific productivity and to an increased impact measured by current procedures (i.e. Hirsch and Egghe index score distributions). Recently collected data from the Romanian universities show that increased financial resources is associated with an inflated number of publications which have a rather low impact. We thus follow the idea that higher research productivity and impact is not determined only by growing funding, but also by appropriate policy incentives. Consequently, we analyze the institutional arrangements carried away by the recently implemented reforms in the Romanian higher education and suggest that their institutional incentives could also bring along an increase in the impact of research productivity. In the context of economic crisis and scarcity of public resources, we argue that a higher research productivity and impact may better be delivered through providing institutional incentives that generate responsible and efficient resource allocation and spending in university research centers.

The paper puts forward arguments in favour of a new approach to the study of internationalisation of higher education. It claims that a systematic mapping of the funding of internationalisation could shed new light on the phenomenon itself and also on the ways it has been conceptualized and studied to date. Preliminary results from a research project adopting this approach are presented, including a series of initial findings and interpretations it has made possible. They provide a basis for the construction of the proposed conceptual framework for the study of internationalisation, which may also serve the creation of heuristic instruments for further research in this context. The paper focuses primarily on potential scholarly contributions (in terms of new knowledge and conceptual refining), and discusses briefly potential lessons to be considered from a policy perspective.

The South-east Asian region has experienced waves of rapid change when countries moved towards greater liberalization in their socio-economic activities and closer interdependence regionally and globally. The changing landscape in higher education is chiefly characterized by massification, diversification, marketization, and internationalization. The increase in demands for higher education has manifested in three forms—larger number of student population, higher interest in cross-border knowledge and experience, the need for more variety of academic programs. In response, governments in all the countries have built more higher education institutions, allowing private sector to play a bigger role, as well as granting greater autonomy to public universities. Higher education restructuring in a number of South-east Asian countries have led to establishment of autonomous and other forms of higher education institutions. Although different governance models exist, these institutions are generally given stronger executive body and new governing board, along with increased autonomy and responsibilities on financial, human resource, and academic management. The move towards regional integration--the ASEAN Community—in 2015 adds another important dimension to the shift in the region's higher education landscape. The need of harmonize has led many governments to change their education systems. At the regional level, although several multilateral systems exist, each has its own limitations and is not universally adopted. Regional integration requires that harmonization and creation of a regional common space in higher education be made a central policy priority of ASEAN, with a more systematic approach and concrete collective actions built around common regional goals.

Over the past decade or so, higher education has experience a variety of transformations that brought foreword in policy agenda and institutional governance renewed attention to academic excellence and diversification of mission of higher education institutions. Emergence and influence of university rankings, especially the global ones, has been one of the consequences of those paradigm-shifting developments. They respond to the need for evidence-based and accessible to various stakeholders information. The main purpose of this paper is to present and assess how excellence, diversification and university rankings have found its place in the context of the Bologna Process and the European Higher Education Area.

One of generic characteristics of higher education systems is their slow evolution. Governments are not happy with this fact as they understand the role universities could play in the development of innovation-based economies or in the global political and cultural competition. More and more governments choose to push public and private universities to achieve the so-called world class status that brings additional legitimization for the state policies and allegedly facilitates the national economic development. There are different approaches to establish a group of globally competitive universities in different countries. The paper examines the excellence-driven policies and initiatives. The paper includes the analysis of more than 20 excellence initiatives based on policy documents, ranking data and interviews. The paper shows that the there are two rationales for these initiatives. First, they are based on the belief that the world class universities help countries to become more competitive. Second, the international rankings put enormous pressure on the governments to demonstrate global competitiveness of their universities. The paper shows that in the most cases the design of such initiatives is based on clear indicators of universities performance. There are many words that the aim of “pushing” universities for excellence is not only to achieve specific indicators but to develop within-the-university culture of self-development and change management. However the majority of the initiatives do not have specific elements of the design to achieve this goal. The paper examines the implementation process of such initiatives in general and in the context of Bologna Process particularly. The main deficiencies of the implementation include tight control, insufficient time and financial resources. At the same time in many cases the implementation process relies on the increasing internationalization and modernization of the university management. The discussion of the outcomes of such initiatives is limited by the data available. Usually the changes in the ranking position are considered as the main outcome. The authors discuss other approaches to evaluate the excellence initiatives. In the concluding section, the question of the relationships between Bologna Process and excellence initiatives in the context of the national higher education policies is discussed.

A further opening of universities towards social stakeholder groups is a part of the modernization agenda in the European Higher Education Area. This ambition is often overwritten with the concept of ‘Third Mission’. The third mission bundles all activities outside the academic environment and promotes interaction with other target groups. Typical areas of the third mission are continuing education, technology transfer and innovation, and the social engagement of the university as an institution. Future positioning of higher education institutions will take place more over their third mission strategies and activities. This article considers the third mission as a widening of teaching and research, introduces possible activities and calls for a systematic and strategic examination of the subject as well as for an integration into rankings. Furthermore, the article aims to stimulate critical reflection on the third mission indicators, so that the third mission becomes a more relevant part of the social contract.

Since forever colleges and universities compete with each other for students, teachers, donors and social support. For a long time, the competition has been evaluated by implicit reputation without any data to back up perceptions. Recently the competition has been accelerated in many countries as governments develop initiatives to build world-class universities that can compete more effectively with other leading institutions across the globe. Although there are concerns with using rankings as tool for measuring the quality of a university, many institutional leaders still often rely on rankings to inform their policymaking. Global rankings have major impacts on higher education systems, higher education institutions, academics and consumers (students, parents, employers). For this reason, university rankings should encourage universities around the world to carry out a self assessment in relation to several quality issues, including sustainability. None of the main global rankings have so far addressed the issue, both in terms of good practice assessments and as an important signal to society as a whole. The introduction of sustainability in global rankings could be an important addition to the existing metrics and a significant dimension of comparison with multiple and far reaching benefits, not only for single universities as well as for the entire higher educational system. It is important introducing sustainability in global rankings not simply as a criterion for identifying the best universities, but as a general underlying best practice principle in university activities, in the same way they have been recognized in all other institutions such as companies and households.

In the last ten years, rankings of higher education institutions have been proliferating. Although there are many international rankings available, the major ones— such as those provided by ARWU, QS and THE—share several similar characteristics. Even if there are many beneficial effects of rankings on policy development, on the management of institutions and despite of being a “transparency tool” for other stakeholders, there is a criticism of rankings. Based on these criticisms, however, new rankings have been developed in the last couple of years: U-Multirank and U21 Ranking of National Higher Education Systems. In the paper it will be explored to what extent these rankings are able to overcome the problems of previous rankings, and also what strengths and shortcomings they have on methodological and conceptual level. Finally, attention is given to how rankings, ratings and classifications are embedded in the European Higher Education Area, and how the peculiarity of the European region influences the impact of the old and new rankings