Project Financing of German Universities as an Instrument for Improving their Competitiveness among the World's Leading Scientific and Educational Centers

Higher education institutions present key social institutions ensuring the creation and transfer of knowledge, intellectual capital, and innovations. This fact determines the significance of universities in state regulation and allocating financial resources to the best of them is becoming a crucial objective in many countries. Goals of the article is to study of the German Excellence Initiative project. The study identifies the characteristics of the Excellence Initiative project. A set of indicators of the project effectiveness is presented and the positive effects and problems of the project are indicated. Directions for the development of the European Universities’ project financing system are proposed. Project financing allowed changing the organizational structure of the German science system. However, it is necessary to continue the search for various cooperation formats and the ways for the development of gifted researchers in the scientific sphere, strengthen the universities’ prestige and infrastructure, and further improve the project financing models. Institutional strategies are aimed at strengthening the positions of a university overall allowing it to successfully compete with the leading participants in the international scientific arena. An institutional strategy requires a university to develop a long-term policy of consistent expansion and improvement of the quality of its research and promotion of young scientists and researchers allowing to identify the existing strengths and set priorities

A categorization of arguments for counting methods for publication and citation indicators

Most publication and citation indicators are based on datasets with multi-authored publications and thus a change in counting method will often change the value of an indicator. Therefore it is important to know why a specific counting method has been applied. I have identified arguments for counting methods in a sample of 32 bibliometric studies published in 2016 and compared the result with discussions of arguments for counting methods in three older studies. Based on the underlying logics of the arguments I have arranged the arguments in four groups. Group 1 focuses on arguments related to what an indicator measures, Group 2 on the additivity of a counting method, Group 3 on pragmatic reasons for the choice of counting method, and Group 4 on an indicator's influence on the research community or how it is perceived by researchers. This categorization can be used to describe and discuss how bibliometric studies with publication and citation indicators argue for counting methods

Best Practices of Engineering Training in World Leading Universities

В статье-обзоре освещаются лучшие образовательные практики инженерно-технической подготовки в ведущих зарубежных университетах. Рассматривается современный контекст инженерно-технической подготовки, анализируются ожидания и запросы различных участников образовательного процесса, в том числе представителей промышленности. Основной задачей исследования являлось изучение лучших образовательных практик ведущих зарубежных университетов в области инженерно-технической подготовки, анализ образовательных политик университетов и поддерживающих их реализацию мероприятий. Обсуждаются нововведения в образовательной политике вузов, чей опыт инженерно-технической подготовки определяется новыми задачами реформирования образовательных программ посредством внедрения новых технологий активного, проектного, проблемного обучения с целью формирования у студентов ключевых профессиональных и востребованных межотраслевых профессионально значимых компетенций. Приводятся примеры организации учебного процесса в зарубежных университетах в сотрудничестве с работодателями, а также интегрированная в реальную производственную деятельность подготовка профессорско-преподавательского состава. Выводы авторов относительно изменений современного состояния инженерно-технической подготовки в ведущих зарубежных университетах представлены в рекомендательном ключе с целью возможного пилотирования и интеграции лучших практик в образовательную деятельность по подготовке инженеров в российских университетах.The paper reviews best educational practices in engineering training provided by world leading universities. Modern landscape of engineering training and education has been viewed; expectations and needs of different stakeholders of educational process have been considered, including those of industry representatives. The main purpose of our research is to study the educational practices of the world leading universities in engineering training, to analyze educational policies and training measures supporting their realisation. There are considered the innovations in educational policies of the universities whose experience in engineering training is determined by new objectives of reforming degree programmes via integrating new technologies of active, project-based, and problem-based learning in order to develop students’ key professional competences and generic skills. The examples of curriculum planning in collaboration with employers are viewed. The university staff training integrated into real industry operating is considered. The authors’ conclusions on the changes in the current state of engineering training are presented in the form of advice, with the orientation towards prospective piloting and integration of the best practices into engineering education in Russian universities

Searching by grant number: comparison of funding acknowledgments in NIH RePORTER, PubMed, and Web of Science

Objective: Several publication databases now index the associated funding agency and grant number metadata with their publication records. Librarians who are familiar with the particulars of these databases can assist investigators and administrators with data gathering for publication summaries and metrics required for renewals of and progress reports for National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants. Methods: Publication lists were pulled from three main indexers of publication-associated funding information (NIH RePORTER, PubMed, and Web of Science), using iterative search strategies. All discovered variations for the cited grant number of interest were recorded and tested. Publication lists were compared for overall coverage. Results: A total of 986 publications citing the single grant number of interest were returned from the given time frame: 920 were found in PubMed, 860 in NIH RePORTER, and 787 in Web of Science. Web of Science offered the highest percentage of publications that were not found in the other 2 sources (n=63). Analysis of publication funding acknowledgments uncovered 21 variations of the specific NIH award of interest that were used to report funding support. Conclusions: This study shows that while PubMed returns the most robust list of publications, variations in the format of reported funding support and indexing practices meant no one resource was sufficient to capture all publications that cited a given NIH project grant number. Librarians looking to help build grant-specific publication lists will need to use multiple resources and be aware of the most frequently reported grant variations to identify a comprehensive list of supported publications.  This article has been approved for the Medical Library Association’s Independent Reading Program

Heterogeneous regional university funding and firm innovation: An empirical analysis of the German excellence initiative

This paper estimates the effect of heterogeneous university funding stemming from the German Excellence Initiative on a regional firm’s probability to innovate by using a multi-valued two-way fixed effects difference-in-differences model. The estimations show that funding an additional Excellence Cluster focused on internationally competitive research within a labor market region increases a regional firm’s probability to innovate between 0.3 and 0.9 percentage points. This effect is driven by firms within labor market regions receiving a high number of Excellence Clusters. There is no statistically significant effect for receiving a low number of Excellence Clusters. Moreover, we find no consistent statistically significant effect of funding Graduate Schools concentrating on training scientists nor of funding University Strategies promoting the overall long-term plan of a university

ESSAYS ON MARKET-BASED MECHANISMS IN HIGHER EDUCATION: CHALLENGES AND IMPLICATIONS FOR EUROPEAN UNIVERSITIES

In many European countries, a change from a public university model towards more responsible and procedurally autonomous organizations took place. The shift includes a strong emphasis on market, competition and related elements, like incentive steering, managerial capabilities, individual profiling and organizational learning, quality assurance and evaluation. These recent higher education reforms have often been described as managerial reforms, which have moved the universities’ governance regime towards a much more competition-driven and managerial arrangement. Yet, universities provide public services for which at least in most of the European countries no real market exists and their primary funding comes from public resources, hence these tendencies towards market and competition result at most in quasi-markets. The introduction of quasi-market mechanisms led government to implement different policies to address these changes. They focused among others on three distinctive aspects: the cost sharing of higher education and the shift toward student tuition; the performance-based research funding mechanisms; the promotion of interaction with industry and the raise of academic entrepreneurship This dissertation aims to investigate the main implications of the application of market-based policies to higher education, in terms of university managerial reactions. In relation to the diffusion of the cost sharing phenomenon, some universities decided not to modify their tuition price setting strategy, some have indiscriminately increased tuition fees, while others targeted for their recruitment strategy ‘full fee paying’ students more aggressively within the global higher education marketplace. Accordingly, the first essay of my dissertation investigates the dynamics of university competition on price setting decision after the 2008 financial crisis by relying on data from 59 Italian state universities over the period 2003-2014. Italy represents an interesting setting where to investigate the post-crisis dynamics of university competition as an example of both a Southern European country strongly affected by the economic recession as well as cuts in public funds and a quasi-market where universities increasingly compete for attracting students. Concerning the establishment of performance-based research funding mechanisms, universities adopted the strategy to position themselves at the top of the international rankings, as outstanding research institutions. The second essay of my dissertation investigates the issue of international competition and visibility. It provides an analysis of the impact of a specified policy intervention aimed to promote and select outstanding research active universities by allocating competitive additional public funds: the Excellence Initiative in Germany. Referring to the promotion of interaction with industry and the raise of academic entrepreneurship, universities became fully engaged in the spinoff activity. The third essay of my dissertation aims to contribute to the literature on the drivers of this kind of firms, by focusing on a specific university feature, the degree of internationalization. Academic spinoffs indeed are found to be more prone to internationalize than similar firms due to the essential role played by universities and in particular internationalized universities in offering networks and capabilities as well as dynamic and mobile human capital. University internationalization in this way contribute to the national economic growth by stimulating the international orientation of their affiliated firms. As a whole, this thesis provides some insights into the main challenges that universities are experiencing in terms of marketization of Higher Education and their consequent managerial reactions. Hence, it discusses such reactions extensively, it outlines some theoretical and practical contributions and derives some policy implications

Uma medida de impacto de políticas públicas de investimento na Ciência : análise de equidade e o uso de econometria com o modelo das diferenças em diferenças no universal e em bolsas de doutorado

O objetivo desta pesquisa é desenvolver método para calcular o Impacto de uma Política Pública de Financiamento em Ciência. Como diretriz, a metodologia foi concebida de forma que seja escalável a várias políticas públicas, transparente, que permita a comparação entre avaliações diferentes, tanto de forma longitudinal (entre políticas) quanto vertical (no tempo) e que seja adequada a usos frequentes e automatizados ou semiautomatizados. O método infere e mede a causalidade entre um dos diversos indicadores retirados do Currículo Lattes, comparando esse indicador entre duas distintas datas e levando-se em consideração o investimento realizado. Para isso, foi desenvolvido modelo quase-experimental de análise econométrica baseada no método das Diferenças em Diferenças, método recomendado pelo Banco Mundial, com o uso de múltiplas regressões lineares multivariadas. Para colocar o método em prática, foram baixados e tratados Currículos Lattes dos bolsistas do recorte, com o uso da linguagem Python e do banco de dados PostgreSQL, de modo que cada atributo em que “ANO” estivesse disponível, foi retirado um indicador, como por exemplo “Artigo Publicado” e “Orientação de Doutorado Concluída”. Para testar o método proposto, ele foi aplicado em duas distintas políticas públicas de investimento à ciência e os resultados estudados. No entanto, percebeu-se nesse processo a possibilidade de presença de misoginia no nas concessões do CNPq antes nunca detectada ou estudada. Dessa forma, essa misoginia também foi estudada, encontrando-se forte indicador de presença de discriminação sexual contra as mulheres, presente principalmente no valor financiado a menor para mulheres e no teto de vidro1 para cargos de alto status ou poder. Encontrou-se também que as principais agências de fomento federais (a CAPES e o CNPq) possuem impactos quase equivalentes em suas políticas de concessão de bolsas de doutorado e que o financiamento na Chamada Universal possui melhor custo-efetividade. Comprovou-se, portanto, que a ferramenta pode ser aplicada e que traz medida do impacto do investimento público em ciência, podendo ser amplamente adotada e até mesmo automatizada.The objective is to present a method to calculate the Impact of a Public Policy on Science Funding. As a guideline, the methodology was conceived in such a way that it is scalable to several public policies, transparent, allows comparison between different evaluations, both longitudinally (between policies) and vertically (in time) and adequate to frequent and automated or semi-automated uses. The method infers and measures the causality between one of the several indicators present in the Lattes Curriculum, comparing this indicator between two different dates and considering the investment made. For this, a quasi-experimental econometric model was developed based on the Differences in Differences method (which was recommended by the World Bank) with the use of multiple multivariate linear regressions. To put the method into practice, Lattes Curriculum were downloaded and treated, using the Python language and the PostgreSQL database, so that each attribute in which “YEAR” was available resulted in an indicator (such as “Article Published” and “Concluded Doctoral Orientation”). To test the proposed method, it was applied in two different public policies for investment in science and the results studied. However it was noticed in this process the possibility of misogyny in CNPq’s funding that had never been detected or studied before. Thus, this misogyny was also studied, finding a strong indicator of the presence of sexual discrimination against women mainly present in the amount financed at minus for women and in the glass ceiling for positions of high status or power. It was also found that the main federal funding agencies (CAPES and CNPq) have almost equivalent impacts on their policies for awarding doctoral scholarships, but that funding at Universal has an even greater impact. It was proved that the tool can be applied and that it measures the impact of public investment in science and can be widely adopted and even automated