The dynamics of university units as a multi-level process. Credibility cycles and resource dependencies

This paper presents an analysis of resource acquisition and profile development of institutional units within universities. We conceptualize resource acquisition as a two level nested process, where units compete for external resources based on their credibility, but at the same time are granted faculty positions from the larger units (department) to which they belong. Our model implies that the growth of university units is constrained by the decisions of their parent department on the allocation of professorial positions, which represent the critical resource for most units’ activities. In our field of study this allocation is largely based on educational activities, and therefore, units with high scientific credibility are not necessarily able to grow, despite an increasing reliance on external funds. Our paper therefore sheds light on the implications that the dual funding system of European universities has for the development of units, while taking into account the interaction between institutional funding and third-party funding

Assessing health facility performance in Indonesia using the Pabón-Lasso model and unit cost analysis of health services

Total health care costs have dramatically increased in Indonesia, and health facilities consume the largest share of health resources. This study aims to provide a better understanding of the characteristics of the best-performing health facilities. We use 4 national Indonesian datasets for 2011 and analysed 200 hospitals and 95 health centres. We first apply the Pabón-Lasso model to assess the relative performance of health facilities in terms of bed occupancy rate and the number of admissions per bed; the model gathers together health facilities into 4 sectors representing different levels of productivity. We then use a step-down costing method to estimate the cost per outpatient visit, inpatient, and bed days in hospitals and health centres. We combined both ratio analysis and applied bivariate and multivariate analyses to identify the predictors of the best-performing health facility; 37% of hospitals and 33% of health centres were located in the high-performing sector of the Pabón-Lasso model. The wide variation in unit costs across health facilities presented a basis for benchmarking and identifying relatively efficient units. Combining the unit cost analysis and Pabón-Lasso model, we find that health facility performance is affected by both internal (size and capacity, financing, type of patients, ownership, accreditation status, and staff availability) and external factors (economic status, population education level, location, and population density). Our study demonstrates that it is feasible to identify the best-performing health facilities and provides information about how to improve efficiency using simplistic methods

Competing for Public Resources: Higher Education and Academic Research in Europe. A Cross-Sectoral Perspective

The chapter focuses on the increasing cross-sectoral competition for public resources between various types of public sector institutions in Europe and its implications for future public funding for both higher education and academic research. It views the major models of the institution of the modern (Continental) university and the major types of the modern institution of the state, and of the welfare state in particular, as traditionally closely linked (following Kogan et al., 2000; Kogan and Hanney, 2000; Becher and Kogan, 1992). Historically, in the post-war period in Europe, the unprecedented growth of welfare states and state-funded public services was paralleled by the unprecedented growth of public universities. The massification and universalization of higher education in Europe coincided with the growth of the welfare state in general. Currently, both processes in higher education are in full swing across Europe while welfare states are under the most far-reaching restructuring in their postwar history. The major implication is the fierce competition for public resources, studied in this chapter from a cross-sectoral perspective, in which the future levels of public funding for higher education in tax-based European systems are highly dependent on social attitudes towards what higher education brings to society and the economy, relative to what other claimants to the public purse can bring to them

Die Einfuehrung von Bachelor- und Masterprogrammen an deutschen Hochschulen

'Fuer die Studie wurden saemtliche Hochschulleitungen der HRK befragt (Ruecklauf 54 Prozent), ob und in welchem Umfang sie sich in der Einfuehrung neuer Studienstrukturen engagieren, welche Weichenstellungen sie fuer die weitere Entwicklung vorgenommen haben und welche Ziele sie mit den neuen Studiengaengen verfolgen. Denn in Deutschland ist die Einfuehrung der neuen Programme Sache der Hochschulen. Daneben wurde eine Sonderauswertung des Statistischen Bundesamtes von 2000/2001, die Datenbank des Hochschulkompass der Hochschulrektorenkonferenz (HRK) sowie Ergebnisse des Hochschulforschungsinstituts Halle/ Wittenberg hinzugezogen. Die Ergebnisse zeigen: Anders als in den Niederlanden, die sich auf Initiative der Hochschulen entschlossen haben komplett auf Bachelor und Master umzustellen, befindet sich die Einfuehrung der neuen Programme in Deutschland noch in einer Pionierphase.' (Textauszug)SIGLEAvailable from http://www.che.de/Intranet/upload/BMStudie deutsch.pdf / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekDEGerman

The role of higher education institutions in transnational networks for teaching and learning innovation: the case of the Erasmus+ programme

Within the scholarship on internationalisation in higher education, transnational networks are seldom mentioned and even less studied. However, recent EU policy initiatives have attempted to enhance this form of internationalisation in order to tackle issues of employability, skills and competences and innovative curriculum development. Within European transnational networks, higher education institutions are posited to play a central role, as they are considered engines of socio-economic development in the so-called Knowledge Economy. To explore empirically the significance of higher education institutions in such networks, this article presents an analysis of 991 European networks promoting educational innovation within the Erasmus+ programme between 2014 and 2018. We analyse the role of higher education institutions by network size, governance, membership, and associated types of innovation. Our findings confirm expectations about the pivotal role of higher education institutions. However, expectations should be significantly nuanced, as higher education institutions tend to lead comparatively small networks. Also, higher education institutions tend to favour general innovative themes rather than specialised topics. Our contribution is threefold. First, it increases our understanding of higher education institutions’ capacity to engage with multi-level, multi-actor, multi-country innovation networks. Second, it sheds light on how higher education institutions have engaged with different priorities in EU’s modernisation agenda. Finally, our paper extends the scholarship on internationalisation in higher education by looking at transnational networks in teaching and learning as an emerging phenomenon