Search

Comparative higher education is arguably lagging behind its sister field of comparative education. It has been developed more recently, lacks in institutional structure, its intellectual debate is marginal, and its political construction is incomplete. Yet, despite the pitfalls of comparative higher education research, this article argues that higher education would benefit highly from a strong and united field of comparative studies, built around a community of comparatists. A strong comparative research field in higher education would serve incredibly well in a sector that is highly internationalised, helping develop theories and conceptualisations, as well as methodologies. It would help strengthen research and further our understanding of higher education at all levels – global, international, and local.

Excellence education, in the form of honours, talent or plus programmes, is a relatively new, but broadly adopted, educational form in Dutch higher education. As not much is know about its effects, this dissertation aims to contribute to our understanding in two ways. First, in terms of individual employability related outcomes of excellence education, both from the perspective of participating students and from the perspective of employers. Are students extrinsically motivated the participate? And does excellence education give recent graduates benefits in employers’ recruitment considerations? The second aim relates to organisational effects. To what extent is excellence education a testing ground for education innovations, and to what extent are innovations diffused to the entire higher education institution? The results show that excellence education does indeed have perceived effects on graduates’ employability. With respect to the organisation, some diffusion effects were observed, but more can be gained.

Measuring access to higher education for underrepresented groups is a relevant yet challenging task. The article shows that while social inclusion is recognised as a priority, policymakers, academics, and institutional leaders struggle to define, operationalise, and measure it. This makes answering the question of what constitutes a socially inclusive higher education institution quite difficult. While the answer to this question may be context‐specific, there is a clear need for a set of commonly defined indicators that allow higher education institutions to measure their progress throughout time and in relation to others. The article synthesises insights from policy, practise, and scientific research to identify which indicators are the most promising for assessing the access of under‐representative students to higher education. By discussing indicator relevance, validity and feasibility, the article contributes to the quest for internationally comparable social inclusion indicators of underrepresented student groups.

Having found that excellence education in Dutch higher education institutions can function as a testing ground for educational innovations, we ask the questions: Are ‘excellence education’ teaching methods diffused towards courses in regular study programmes? Are organisational structures affected? And are there noticeable external effects? And through which processes are the rest of the organisation impacted? We study these questions using qualitative empirical insights of five case study higher education institutions. We see some educational, organisational, and external diffusional effects. In education, teachers indicated to experiment with educational content in excellence education, after which they implemented this in regular study programme courses too. On the organisational level, a prominent effect was the creation of new relationship structures, particularly amongst teachers involved in excellence education. Commonly heard external effects included heightened reputation and visibility of the institution due to offering excellence education. Reflecting on the diffusion process, we observe that the diffusion mainly happens through teachers who are involved in excellence and regular education. Policy instruments are rarely specifically designed to create diffusional effects. Consequently, steering of the diffusion of innovations by inter alia university management appears not to happen often.

Purpose This paper aims to examine the development and piloting of a novel European framework for community engagement (CE) in higher education, which has been purposefully designed to progress the CE agenda in a European context. Design/methodology/approach The proposed framework was co-created through the European Union (EU)-funded project towards a European framework for community engagement in higher education (TEFCE). The TEFCE Toolbox is an institutional self-reflection framework that centres on seven thematic dimensions of CE. This paper follows the development of the TEFCE Toolbox through empirical case study analysis of four European universities and their local communities. Findings The findings in this paper indicate that the TEFCE Toolbox facilitates context-specific applications in different types of universities and socioeconomic environments. Incorporating insights from engagement practitioners, students and community representatives the TEFCE Toolbox was successfully applied in universities with diverse profiles and missions. The process facilitated the recognition of CE achievements and the identification of potential areas for improvement. Originality/value Despite a range of international initiatives, there remains an absence of initiatives within the European higher education area that focus on developing tools to comprehensively support CE. The TEFCE Toolbox and case-study analysis presented in this paper address this gap in knowledge. The broader societal contribution and social responsibility of higher education have become increasingly prominent on the European agenda. The TEFCE Toolbox represents an innovative, robust and holistic European framework with the potential to support universities in reflecting upon their pursuit of addressing grand societal challenges, whilst promoting CE.

The Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security (JenV; Justitie en Veiligheid) regards knowledge as an indispensable compass for well-founded and effective policy. A better use of knowledge would lead to the improvement of existing and new policies. Therefore, in 2017 the Ministry of JenV decided that the strategic knowledge function of the Ministry should be strengthened. The message was clear: knowledge management and knowledge innovation, steering for knowledge utilisation and knowledge development, should receive (more) attention within the Ministry of JenV. The aim of the present study is to gain an impression of the extent to which work activities and policymaking within JenV are 'evidence-based' and/or 'evidence-informed'. The main research question of the study is: to what extent can work activities and policymaking within the Ministry of JenV be characterised as 'evidence-based', and which institutional and contextual factors influence this?

Als onderdeel van de bredere aanpassing van de Wet op hoger onderwijs en wetenschappelijk onderzoek (WHW), hebben universiteiten sinds 2017 de mogelijkheid gekregen om het promotierecht ook toe te kennen aan niet-hoogleraren, waar dit recht voorheen exclusief was voorbehouden aan de hoogleraar. Deze wetswijziging is in 2021-22 geëvalueerd door Technolopis en het Center for Higher Education Policy Studies van de UT. De conclusies zijn: Het vestigingsklimaat voor buitenlandse gepromoveerden: De verruiming van het promotierecht maakt het mogelijk dat Nederlandse universiteiten als werkgevers een beter loopbaanperspectief kunnen aanbieden om buitenlandse onderzoekers te interesseren voor een UHD-vacature in Nederland. Ten opzichte van een aantal gelijksoortige wetenschapssystemen is daarmee een comparatief nadeel weggenomen. Uit de statistische analyses en de interviews valt niet te concluderen dat de verruiming van het promotierecht geleid heeft tot een grotere aantrekkingskracht van het Nederlandse wetenschapssysteem voor buitenlandse onderzoekers. Wel is in kwalitatieve termen vast te stellen dat de universiteiten zich in hun wervingsbeleid gesteund voelen dat zij het promotierecht aan sollicitanten in het vooruitzicht kunnen stellen. Desalniettemin zijn persoonlijke factoren en de kwaliteit van het Nederlandse wetenschapssysteem belangrijkere factoren in de keuze van onderzoekers om hun carrière in Nederland voort te zetten. Het loopbaanperspectief voor UHD’s: De verruiming van het promotierecht kan door universiteiten gebruikt kunnen worden om de loopbaanperspectieven van onderzoekers te bevorderen. Hoewel nog geen definitieve conclusie kan worden getrokken, bieden de percepties van UHD’s inzicht in de variëteit aan te verwachten effecten. Veel geïnterviewde UHD’s verwijzen naar de formele erkenning voor hun werk als begeleider als belangrijkste directe impact van de uitbreiding van het promotierecht. Deze erkenning wordt door velen gezien als een belangrijk onderdeel van de algehele beweging tot herwaarderen van ‘erkennen en waarderen’, waarbij ook vragen en verwachtingen op het gebied van loopbaankansen hernieuwd aan de orde komen. Er zijn UHD’s die de toekenning van het promotierecht als een extra stap voorwaarts in hun carrière beschouwen, er zijn ook UHD’s die het typeren als ‘zoethoudertje’ wat zelfs mogelijk een vertragend effect zou hebben op toekomstige bevordering tot hoogleraar. Daarnaast kan de toekenning van het promotierecht gezien worden als een verdere ontwikkeling van de UHD-positie. Waar het tenure track systeem een up-or-out perspectief bood en de UHD-positie tijdelijk was (Rathenau Instituut, 2013), ontstaat er met de uitbreiding van het promotierecht ruimte voor langduriger aanstellingen. Tevens kan met het promotierecht UHD’s meer autonomie geboden worden om hun onderzoekslijn verder uit te bouwen en erkend te worden voor hun capaciteiten als dagelijks begeleider. Daarmee zien veel UHD’s de verruiming van het promotierecht ook als een ontwikkeling waarbij de academische hiërarchie zal afvlakken. Op het moment van deze evaluatie ervaren geïnterviewde UHD’s dit als een nieuw spanningsveld, waarbij de daadwerkelijke impact nog niet goed te bepalen is. De overgrote meerderheid (69%) van de niet-hoogleraren aan wie het ius promovendi toegekend wordt is man. Dit verschil in toekenningen reflecteert de bestaande genderonbalans onder UHD’s. Wel zal de uitbreiding van het promotierecht op termijn leiden tot het sneller dichten van de genderkloof onder promotoren, omdat de genderverhouding onder UHD's evenwichtiger is dan die onder hoogleraren. Desalniettemin is het promotierecht maar één van de factoren in de loopbaanontwikkeling van UHD’s. Zo leven er bij veel UHD’s, zowel degenen met als zonder het promotierecht, veel vragen en onzekerheden over het loopbaanperspectief binnen het Nederlandse wetenschapssysteem. Met name gezien de beperkte middelen die via NWO beschikbaar komen voor UHD’s die nieuwe lijnen willen ontwikkelen en gezien de beperkte ruimte voor toekenning van hoogleraarsposities aan Nederlandse universiteiten zien veel UHD’s slechts een beperkt loopbaanperspectief. De kwaliteit van begeleiding van promovendi: De verruiming van het promotierecht heeft ervoor gezorgd dat UHD’s nu ook de eindverantwoordelijkheid kunnen dragen voor promotietrajecten. De conclusie is dat de verruiming van het promotierecht een positieve uitwerking zal hebben op de begeleiding van promovendi. Onverlet het ontbreken van duidelijke patronen die de impact van niet- hoogleraren als promotoren verklaren, constateren wij dat het beschikbaar komen van een groter aantal promotoren de kans biedt om meer maatwerk in begeleiding van promovendi te leveren – hetgeen zich inmiddels bij een aantal universiteiten begint af te tekenen. Omdat universiteiten gerichte procedures hanteren bij de toekenning van het promotierecht aan UHD’s, en omdat de toekenning van het promotierecht primair een formele bevestiging is van een al bestaande praktijk waarin UHD’s een belangrijke rol speelden in de begeleiding van promovendi, is de verwachting gerechtvaardigd dat de kwaliteit qua senioriteit van begeleiding van de betrokken UHD’s geborgd is. Deze verwachting wordt gestaafd door de geïnterviewde promovendi die aangeven dat begeleiding onder leiding van een UHD met promotierecht geen impact heeft gehad op de kwaliteit van de begeleiding. De functie van de promotor – hoogleraar of UHD – is volgens de promovendi niet bepalend voor de kwaliteit van de begeleiding. Daarnaast verwijzen promovendi, onderzoekers en universiteiten naar de verschillende mechanismen die zorg dragen voor de kwaliteitsborging van promotietrajecten. De uitbreiding van het promotierecht biedt meer mogelijkheden voor maatwerk in de samenstelling van het begeleidingsteam van een promovendus. Doordat er meer promotoren beschikbaar zijn, kan de samenstelling van een begeleidingsteam meer op inhoudelijke of methodologische overwegingen worden vormgegeven. Dit maatwerk is onder andere van betekenis voor promovendi die zich op een specialisatie binnen een discipline richten of op een multidisciplinair thema, waar er behoefte kan zijn aan promotoren met een hele specifieke expertise. Deze verbeterde aansluiting zou volgens de gesproken onderzoekers in de praktijk kunnen zorgen voor een gerichtere en intensievere begeleiding.

This booklet summarizes the experiences of eight European higher education institutions in applying the HEInnovate self-assessment tool. HEInnovate was developed to support higher education institutions in their efforts to become more entrepreneurial. The booklet describes the various steps that these institutions can make to embed entrepreneurship in their education, research and knowledge transfer processes. These steps can be supported by the HEInnovate tool and some additional features that were added as part of the EU-financed BeyondScale project. The booklet also provides recommendations and guidelines for enhancing the use and usefulness of the HEInnovate tool and methodology.

Met de uitbreiding van het promotierecht, een wetswijziging uit 2017, zouden carrièreperspectieven van senior onderzoekers moeten verbeteren, zou de kwaliteit van de begeleiding niet mogen verminderen en zouden universiteiten meer recht doen aan de feitelijke inspanningen van niet-hoogeleraren, passend bij de gedachte van 'erkennen en waarderen'. Technopolis en CHEPS hebben deze uitbreiding in opdracht van het ministerie geëvalueerd. In het artikel leest u de belangrijkste uitkomsten van deze evaluatie.

HEInnovate is a self-assessment tool for higher education institutions (HEIs). It provides reflection and guidance to support HEIs in their efforts to encourage entrepreneurship and innovation.This report, as part of the EU-funded BeyondScale project, discusses the use of HEInnovate and introduces the concept of a value proposition workshop to enhance the usefulness of HEInnovate.

This report provides the results of a systematic literature review focusing on entrepreneurial teaching and learning in higher education. It addresses the question “How can higher education institutions (HEIs) implement entrepreneurship education?” It identifies the interventions, challenges and barriers to entrepreneurial teaching and learning. In particular, it focuses on what factors contribute making the change process work. The review was prepared as part of the EU-funded BeyondScale project.

England’s higher education funding system has been reformed many times, leading to a system based on high fees and loans. Undergraduate tuition fees for full-time students were introduced in 1998 and rose to £3,000 a year in 2006, increasing further to £9,000 in 2021. Through a series of in-depth interviews, this report from Professor Claire Callender and Dr Ariane de Gayardon explores the views of 48 graduates from the 2006 funding regime and 50 graduates from the 2012 funding regime, with the results providing much needed insights into graduates’ perspectives of the English student loan system.

When a global health crisis ren- ders mobility impossible, making all universities de facto isolated and remote, researchers should look at ways to redefine and gen- eralize internationalization while removing the exclusive focus on mobility. Learning from the “un- usual suspects” of internation- alization—i.e., institutions that were considered remote before the crisis—is a unique opportu- nity to move the focus away from student mobility and foster more sustainable and inclusive inter- nationalization practices.

The management and implementation of the Comenius programme is in the hands of the Netherlands Initiative for Education Research (NRO). The NRO commissioned this evaluation and requested to focus on the effectiveness of the grants and the efficiency of the application and assessment processes. For this evaluation, we used policy documents, applications to the Comenius programme and project documents contained in the NWO ISAAC database relating to the Comenius programme. In addition, interviews were held with those involved in the implementation of the programme, with Comenius Fellows and unsuccessful applicants, and with other stakeholders at higher education institutions. In the summer of 2021, also a survey was conducted among all Comenius Fellowship applicants.

Incentives are so widespread and seemingly so insignificant that we might simply take them at face value and fail to ask how we can account for their emergence and proliferation. Building upon Foucault’s notion of ‘problematization’ as a mode of reading history, this paper questions the taken-for-granted place that incentives have come to acquire in our current reflections and practices. To do so, it returns to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when American mechanical engineers and social scientists turned the behaviour of factory workers into a managerial problem and began to design new instruments to incentivize them. The shift from the current proliferation of incentives to their past opens up a genealogical space that invites us to explore the contingent shifts in meaning and use of incentivization as a framework to understand and govern human behaviour over the course of the twentieth century. Such a shift opens up an analytical space too. The return to early instances of incentivization allows us to compare labour incentives with labour discipline and to tease out some of the similarities and differences between these two ways of wielding power on the shop floor – and possibly beyond.

Employing the Twenty Statements Test and a framework of self-motives (self-esteem, self-efficacy, authenticity), this paper examines the self-concept of Ukrainian doctoral students while means-ends decoupling takes place at the state level. The latter implies that the practices of state policies are disconnected from the state's core goal of creating public welfare. Data are taken from a survey of 125 doctoral students at one Ukrainian university and supplemented with 30 personal interviews within the sample of respondents. The findings reveal that in the Ukrainian case, means-ends decoupling at the state level causes institutional complexity, which results in means-ends decoupling at the organisational level, which in turn leads to cultural complexity. Institutional and cultural complexities experienced by doctoral students trigger them to sustain means-ends decoupling at the individual level. The main decoupling for most Ukrainian PhD students is that doctoral education neither increases their employability nor contributes to the development of science, economy or society. Means-ends decoupling at all levels results not only in a severe diversion of financial and human capital but also has a negative impact on individuals' well-being, hindering their personal and professional development and evoking a sense of meaning-lessness, alienation and cognitive dissonance.

In this introductory article, the guest editors introduce the special issue by providing some background information on excellence programmes in higher education in the Netherlands. This article also describes the current state of knowledge on excellence programmes in the Netherlands, especially in terms of the effects of these programmes on students and on higher education institutions, and they identify how this special issue fills some of the most prominent remaining gaps in the literature on this topic. In the remainder of the introductory article, the authors briefly summarize the other articles in the special issue, and synthesize the main conclusions from these studies to shed further light on the key contributions of this special issue to the literature, and on recommendations for policy makers, institutions, and teaching staff in higher education.

This chapter considers the role of universities in stimulating social innovation, and in particular the issue that despite possessing substantive knowledge that might be useful for stimulating social innovation, universities to date have not been widely engaged in social innovation activities in the context of quadruple helix developmental models. We explain this in terms of the institutional logics of engaged universities, in which entrepreneurial logics have emerged in recent decades, that frame the desirable forms of university-society engagement in terms of the economic benefits they bring. We ask whether institutional logics could explain this resistance of universities to social innovation. Drawing on two case studies of universities sincerely committed to supporting social innovation, we chart the effects of institutional logics on university supported social innovation. We observe that there is a “missing middle” between enthusiastic managers and engaged professors, in which four factors serve to undermine social innovation activities becoming strategically important to HEIs. We conclude by noting that this missing middle also serves to segment the operation of quadruple helix relationships, thereby undermining university contributions to societal development more generally., This paper draws on work supported by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Marie Skłodowska-Curie action grant agreement No. 722295, the RUNIN Project. This work was also financed by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, under Project PTDC/EGE-OGE/31635/2017.

There is increasing interest in the question of how different stakeholders develop, implement and lead regional upgrading processes with the concept of place leadership emerging as one response to this. Simultaneously, universities face growing expectations that they will contribute to regional development processes – often through their collaborative relationships with other regional stakeholders. But universities are complex in terms of their internal and institutional structures, which undermines their capacities to enact coherent place leadership roles. We seek to understand how strategic leadership in universities can contribute to innovation and regional development in the context of the fundamental institutional complexity of universities. We address this through a qualitative, explorative case study comparing six European regions where universities have sincerely attempted to deliver place leadership roles. We identify that the elements of agency and alignment are vital in that: firstly, university leadership has to align with regional coalitions on the one hand and internal structures on the other hand, and secondly, this leadership must give individuals agency in their regional engagement activities

At the request of the NFU, we examined the funding of medical higher education in three countries, namely Sweden, England and Germany / North Rhine-Westphalia, and compared it with the Netherlands. This comparison involves some case studies from universities with medical faculties for each of these countries. Our conclusions point to funding rates for the medical programmes that are 3.4 times as high as the rates for social sciences in the Netherlands, if we include the private funding through students' tuition fees as well as the fixed funding that universities receive independent of their student numbers. In England, the ratio is 3:1; in Germany the ratio is 4.2 : 1, while in Sweden it is 4.1 : 1. Our results indicate that there are valid reasons for employing higher funding rates for medical programs. How high the rates should be, compared to social sciences, will differ between countries and depends on multiple factors, political considerations, and how countries deal with the training costs incurred by academic hospitals during the clinical phase of training programmes.

This entry to the Oxford online Bibliographies in Education identifies the key scholarly works published in recent decades about the topic of higher education finance. It lists the general overview works, as well as publications addressing specific themes related to financing higher education. Each theme is introduced by a commentary paragraph and followed by a select list of annotated citations. More than eighty key academic works are listed, along with ten scholarly journals and five professional publications. To further assist researchers in the field, it provides references to eight sources of public data on higher education finance.

This chapter focuses on developments in governance in European higher education, with a focus on Western Europe. It presents an overview of the literature on this topic, including the various modes of governance as well as the changes in European higher education in recent decades. The chapter starts by describing different conceptual models used to address and analyse higher education governance. Next, it portrays general tendencies with regard to governance and shows that states have been delegating some of their powers to other levels in the higher education system in four directions: an upward shift to the supranational level, a horizontal shift to ‘independent’ agencies, a downward shift to the institutions (‘autonomy’), and an outward shift (‘privatization, contracting’). As a result of these shifts, often cited as a move from government to governance, the modes of system steering and coordination have become more complex and dynamic, including more stakeholders at different policy levels. The chapter then considers that governance configurations in European higher education not only have similarities, but also differ in various ways.

Higher education researchers are often challenged by the difficulty of empirically validating causal links posited by theories or inferred from correlational observations. The instrumental variable (IV) estimation strategy is one approach that researchers can use to estimate the causal impact of various higher education–related interventions. In this chapter, we discuss how the body of quantitative research specifically devoted to higher education has made use of the IV estimation strategy: we describe how this estimation strategy was used to address causality concerns and provide examples of the types of IVs that were used in various subfields of higher education research. Our discussion is based on a systematic review of a corpus of econometric studies on higher education–related issues that spans the last 30 years. The chapter concludes with a critical discussion of the use of IVs in quantitative higher education research and a discussion of good practices when using an IV estimation strategy.

The overall objective of the project the Future of Transnational Collaboration in European Higher Education (FUTURETRAC) – commissioned by the Directorate General Education, Youth, Sport and Culture and carried out by the Centre for Higher Education Governance Ghent (CHEGG), Ghent University, Belgium and the Center for Higher Education Policy Studies (CHEPS), University of Twente, the Netherlands – was to gain insight in the nature and scope of European transnational collaboration in higher education and research in the near future (2030), as well as the drivers and barriers that affect the nature and scope of collaboration. Transnational collaboration was defined as a lasting relationship between two or more higher education institutions (HEIs) from different countries to achieve a shared goal or set of goals, where the HEIs remain legally independent, share benefits and management control over the performance of assigned tasks and make contributions in the education, research and third mission domain. To gain insight into the nature and scope of transnational collaboration, a literature review was carried out, key trends and developments were distinguished and a Delphi study was carried out to build a scenario on transnational collaboration in Europe 2030. The review of the literature on transnational collaboration shows a multitude of drivers and motivations. They include: to cater for needs of students and staff, to build or sustain reputations, to improve the quality of education and research, to reach economies of scale and to reap economic benefits. Studies stress that collaboration is often driven by a combination of various drivers and that motivations or rationales may significantly differ across the domains of teaching, learning and curriculum; research and innovation; and strategic partnerships. The review also led to insights on barriers, as well as factors that enable and sustain collaboration. Complementarities and differences between HEIs are preconditions for cooperation, but at the same time constitute barriers. These barriers play out at the level of coping with different national regulations, institutional missions and strategies and organisational cultures. The literature points out that much effort and capacity (administrative, financial, etc.) is needed to make collaboration actually work. The studies analysed offer limited insights in the actual impact of international collaboration, beyond impressions and perceptions of staff, managers or students. Key trends in the social, economic and technological domain were explored, including their potential impact on higher education in general and transnational collaboration in particular. A cross-impact analysis and futures wheel approach were used to arrive at a shortlist of the seven most important trends and developments: 1) The digital transformation of economic life; 2) Immigration 3) Ageing societies; 4) Attention for Sustainable Development Goals and interdisciplinarity; 5) Scientific collaboration and Open Science; 6) Austerity and pressures on public services; and 7) Socio-economic inequality. The trends and outcomes of the Delphi survey were used to build a scenario for transnational collaboration in Europe in the year 2030. The scenario highlights that higher education institutions feel they can and must cooperate. The key findings regarding the scope and nature of transnational collaboration in 2030 are that cooperation will primarily take place between HEIs of similar type, status and reputation. Transnational consortia will differ significantly in size, but most networks focus on teaching and research. There will also be increased cooperation with the private sector.

PurposeThis article aims to explore the implications of means–ends decoupling at the state level for the implementation of the global model of the research university by the deans and department heads. Means–ends decoupling at the state level implies that the policies and practices of the state are disconnected from its core goal of creating public welfare.Design/methodology/approachData that form the basis of analysis were collected through twenty-four semi-structured interviews with deans and department heads from the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences who were in their positions during 2010–2014, at two Ukrainian universities.FindingsApart from means–ends decoupling at the state level, which resulted in institutional complexity, case universities also sustained means–ends decoupling at the organisational level, which led to cultural complexity. Institutional and cultural complexities experienced by the deans and department heads, as well as their practices and values deviated from the global model of the research university, entailed them sustaining means–ends decoupling at the individual level. The degree of means–ends decoupling maintained by the deans and department heads at the individual level varied depending on organisational, disciplinary and individual cultural dimensions.Originality/valueThis research contributes to the policy development and implementation studies highlighting how mismatches in policies at both state and organisational levels hinder the achievement of the intended outcomes.

Several countries have gained experience with some form of performance agreements in higher education. The Center for Higher Education Policy Studies (CHEPS) of the University of Twente has conducted a review of the performance agreements found in three countries: Denmark, the Netherlands and Ontario (Canada)1. The lessons learned in these three countries may be used as inputs for discussions on the future of the performance agreements in Norwegian higher education. The full report describes the three systems in more detail (Jongbloed & de Boer 2020). This Policy Brief summarises the findings and provides guidance for the design of performance agreements.

In this report, we examine the performance agreements that so far have been used in three different higher education systems, that is: Denmark, Ontario in Canada, and the Netherlands. It reflects the variety in performance agreement systems and includes a Nordic, a continental-European and a North-American system. Our report is mostly descriptive, presenting the rationale of the agreements, their goals, some of the procedures surrounding the agreements, as well as some advantages and disadvantages of the agreements. Other issues covered are the indicators used in the agreements, and the question whether the agreements are linked to the amount of public funding received by the higher education institutions – whether delivering on the agreement brings any rewards for the higher education institution.

University-industry-government relationships driving regional innovation are often discussed by using the shorthand of the ‘triple helix’, referring to any arena where these partners come together. This rapid expansion of the idea’s use risks it becoming a ‘policy concept’ whilst potential tensions of collaboration can be ignored. Instead of ‘happy family stories’ of well-functioning regional partnerships, we seek to explore how triple helix mechanisms may stimulate regional innovation systems in places that have traditionally not had a long history of collaboration. Whilst universities are often dominant drivers of innovation in these ‘sparse’ regional innovation ecosystems, they may not be fit to respond to the identified regional needs. We address this by using empirics from five regions with relatively sparse triple helix environments and present evidence on the ways in which the universities have sought to play the role of tertius gaudens—honest broker—helping to address the stalemates that emerge between partners with very different goals, norms, values and intentions around regional innovation. We identified several processes through which universities can play this role and thereby contribute to densifying sparse innovation environments, increasing agglomeration and diversity whilst helping to address the tensions and problems that densification brings.

This study maps the system-level approaches to higher education and vocational education and training graduate tracking across the European Union and the European Economic Area, and their progress towards achieving the requirements of the Council Recommendation on tracking graduates. It finds that about two thirds of the countries have system-level graduate tracking in higher education and vocational education and training. The remainder will have to make considerable improvements if they are to establish system level graduate tracking in the next five years. Ongoing reforms indicate an increasing use of administrative data and a combination of administrative data and surveys to track graduates. The involvement and cooperation of key bodies, including those in charge of the policies and those holding the data and the methodological expertise, are key to successful tracking. A benchmarking of national graduate tracking measures shows that the most significant areas for improvement are a) the coverage of the whole graduate population in both vocational education and training and higher education; b) the inclusion of all (including cross-border) graduates and drop-outs; and c) having a longitudinal approach to tracking. A first survey among higher education institutions found that graduate tracking is generally well-embedded in higher education institutions across EU and EEA countries.

There is a tendency to think in primarily economic terms (e.g., economic and financial opportunities) when considering how major science, technology and business spaces, also known as science parks (e.g., Silicon Valley, USA; Science Vale, UK), attract international knowledge migrants (IKMs) from the global knowledge economy. However, other elements that make places attractive for IKMs to achieve desirable standards of living are often not sufficiently addressed in the recent literature. Using a single case study of the Dutch science park Novel-T, this paper investigates how science parks can deliberately be created to attract and retain IKMs using a new multidimensional model for understanding the attractive effects of science parks on human capital. The fieldwork element involved 20 semi-structured face-to-face interviews, which were analyzed using a narrative analysis technique. The results of the case study show that science parks should be understood as multidimensional networks that trigger both a social attraction effect for IKMs as well as regional economic development and growth. The importance of the spatial design of science parks as well as the creation of a highly international atmosphere were found to be two influential factors in attracting IKMs to a particular science park in a peripheral region. Moreover, the results show that the deliberate construction of a science park with four intended operational effects is not a simple and controllable process, since some operational effects (e.g., external recognition) appear to be more controllable than others (e.g., internal social dynamics).

Many countries witness the rise of ‘excellence initiatives’. These policies promote vertical differentiation in the science system by funding top research performers and expecting positive spillover effects. However, current understanding of the functioning and (potential) effects of these instruments is limited. We compare policies aimed at promoting excellence in four countries (the UK, Germany, Denmark, and Switzerland), using secondary sources and fourteen expert interviews. Using the notion of coordination approaches as a heuristic tool, we characterise each policy in terms of the coordinating actor, the system addressed, the activities that are coordinated, the specific interventions taken, and the types of relationships affected. We find that countries adopt very different approaches to reach similar goals and thus bring into question appealing but simplistic ideas of ‘excellence’ as an agreed concept. Remarkably, excellence policies are more prone to reveal existing but tacit diversity in the system than to generate new relational patterns.

Nederlandse hogescholen en universiteiten hebben diverse excellentieprogramma’s in de aanbieding. De auteurs deden onderzoek naar de effecten ervan. ‘Zorg ervoor dat kennis over innovaties niet enkel bij de betrokkenen blijft.’