Higher education system rankings and benchmarking

The authors were involved in the Benchmarking Higher Education System Performance project of the OECD referred in the text. However, the opinions expressed in this chapter are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OECD and of its members.The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the emergence of higher education system rankings and other frameworks that attempt to make sense of the performance of higher education systems. It starts with a review of higher education system rankings and how they attempt to overcome the failings of institutional rankings. It then covers alternative approaches for monitoring higher education beyond traditional rankings. It introduces the approach of benchmarking higher education system performance rooted in the literature on performance, the performance of public services, and the performance of higher education. It offers a view of what is possible to do with an ontological approach to the performance of higher education systems instead of exercises driven by data availability and discusses the challenges of moving forward with such an approach. It concludes by discussing the likely coexistence of the discourses on world-class university with the world-class systems, and the challenge for countries to balance them. © Ellen Hazelkorn and Georgiana Mihut 2021.(undefined

What do Students Value in an Institution of Higher Education? A Study on Institutional Attributes and Tuition at Private Colleges in the United States: A Hedonic Approach

Debates concerning the price of higher education are gaining magnitude on a national scale. Colleges now compete not only on the quality of instruction they provide, but also on various factors which market the educational experience as an “all-inclusive package” of consumption and investment attributes. The investment attributes, on one side, enable students to become qualified for a job in the future. The consumption attributes, on the other side, allow students to get involved in activities of interest outside the academic curriculum. This study argues that colleges, in spite of increased efforts to complement education with attractive factors of consumption, are still valued primarily for the investment benefits that they provide in the long-term. The study examines a cross-section of U.S. private institutions of higher education and uses hedonic models to analyze the relationship between institutional attributes and tuition. Results suggest that both investment and consumption attributes affect students’ willingness to pay for higher education; however, investment attributes have a larger overall impact

Assessing Innovation-related Competences in the MaRIHE Program: Teacher and Student Perceptions

AbstractThe paper aims at expanding the body of research on innovation pedagogy and competence assessment by exploring the teaching and learning of innovation-related competences in an Erasmus Mundus Master program in Research and Innovation in Higher Education (MaRIHE). It does so by comparing the results of two quantitative case studies on MARIHE teachers’ and students’ self-assessment of innovation-related competences. Results reveal that teachers’ perceptions of facilitating innovation-related competences and learners’ perceptions of acquiring them are generally favorable and complement each other. Nevertheless, there is considerable incongruity between the two stakeholder groups with respect to specific innovation-related competences. Furthermore, overall student satisfaction with their competence level is lower than teacher satisfaction with their contribution to its development. The study offers a practical approach to the assessment of innovation-related competences that brings together the perspectives of different stakeholders, highlights possible gaps in teaching and learning, and advances innovation pedagogy in higher education