Steering heterogeneous sciences in the Dutch and Italian higher education systems

This paper studies how the implementation of New Public Management reforms in Higher Education affects the academic bodies’ steering in different national systems and disciplines. It is assumed that the steering capability depends on the characteristics of each system and discipline. The work includes three case studies (two Italian universities and one Dutch university); two research institutes are selected for each university: one HS institute (either Biomedical Sciences or Physics) and one SoSc institute (Management). Evidence confirms that steering capability improves in some disciplines, while other scientific fields remain hardly steerable because the levers are weak, the interest of society and policy makers in research outcomes is small, and the reputational organisations are very influential.Higher Education, Research, Funding, Evaluation, Steering, Governance, Social Sciences, Hard Sciences, New Public Management

The transformation of steering and governance in Higher Education: funding and evaluation as policy instruments.

This paper focuses on policy implementation in higher education (HE) to be analysed through the evolution and transformation of the policy instruments, namely those related to the Government funding and evaluation. The research questions are: to what extent instruments can reveal the evolution of policy rationales and justifications? How instruments emerged, and become institutionalised, affecting and being affected by the characteristics of national configuration of HE systems? Whether and how they produce desired effects or evolve in unpredictable ways, generating unexpected results, playing new roles and functionalities? The evolution of the instruments seems to be dependent on some characteristics of the context and some key features of the instruments. The development has been often inspired by NPM principles, which aimed at increasing steering capacity of the policy maker on one side, and university role and autonomy on the other. The common narrative is then declined in very different ways among countries, and instruments implementation reveals the extent to which it is adapted to the existing characters (dominant paradigm) of the HE system.Higher Education, Funding, Evaluation, Policy instruments, Policy implementation

Framework and operationalisation challenges for quantitative comparative research in higher education

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Policy encourages researcher mobility, but it can be career dead end

European research policies and national research systems encourage researchers, especially PhD and post PhD, to relocate and change institutions. However, discussing new research, Marco Seeber identifies a broken pipeline between those moving institutions and those going on to achieve senior positions that has serious implications for early career researchers. Exploring the reasons for this gap, he suggests how mobile early career researchers and institutions can be better integrated

How do university systems' features affect academic inbreeding? Career rules and language requirements in France, Germany, Italy and Spain

Author's accepted manuscript.Available from 19/01/2023.This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Seeber, M. & Mampaey, J. (2021). How do university systems' features affect academic inbreeding? Career rules and language requirements in France, Germany, Italy and Spain. Higher Education Quarterly, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/hequ.12302. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.Studies on academic inbreeding have mostly focused on institutional inbreeding and its negative effects, whereas little research has explored its causes. We identify current explanations of the macro‐, meso‐ and micro‐level factors that sustain academic inbreeding as well as research gaps. We address a main research gap regarding what macro‐level factors contribute to academic inbreeding, by analysing systems’ norms and rules regulating access to senior academic positions and teaching language requirements in France, Germany, Italy and Spain, the largest public university systems of the European Union. The analysis reveals that career rules designed to guarantee quality may have unintended effects in terms of academic inbreeding. Most importantly, the habilitation procedures pose greater challenges to international candidates and often increase barriers between disciplines as well. In some disciplines and regions, language requirements contribute substantially to academic inbreeding.acceptedVersio

Rewarding peer reviewers: a problem of adverse selection?

As a solution to the worsening peer reviewer shortage, many scientific journals now offer non-monetary rewards as an incentive to researchers to register to review. Marco Seeber and Monica Zaharie report on research studying the efficacy of non-monetary rewards in attracting peer reviewers, exploring whether acceptance varies according to the nature of the offer of the reward or the researcher’s gender, rank, or productivity. While it is often taken for granted that offering a reward will spur a particular behaviour, this is not necessarily true for an undertaking such as peer review, where efforts are often also driven by ethical commitment and other more intrinsic motivations

No road is long with good company. What factors affect Ph.D. student’s satisfaction with their supervisor?

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Drivers of inequalities in Higher Education and the unexpected consequences of equality policies

Diversity is generally considered as a goal to be achieved in order to bring the Higher Education (HE) system closer to the needs of society. Conversely, some European countries have not favoured diversification processes in HE; instead, they have preferred to pursue a policy aimed at homogeneity across higher education institutions (HEIs), assuming that this would ensure equity and quality of both education and research. The main argument of this paper is that HEIs perform differently and policies that do not consider differences across HEIs are likely to increase inequalities. We test the hypothesis that HE systems regulated on the basis of equality assumptions may rather develop substantial inequalities. We analyse the case of Italian universities and use indicators of research quality. We find deep inequalities in research performance, which are strongly correlated to geographic location. Moreover, we find that inequalities cannot be explained only by the weakness of the local economic context, since they are also strongly linked to the social context and to the adoption of policy measures that that do not address the peculiar features of the HEIs and the context in which they are located. Higher Education Policy (2011) 24, 185-211. doi:10.1057/hep.2010.3

Decision-making power and institutional logic in higher education institutions : a comparative analysis of European Universities

The aim of this paper is to analyze responses of public universities to the introduction of New Public Management (NPM) as the outcome of balancing between the managerial logics endorsed by NPM and the academic professional logics. Building on the institutional logics approach, we develop a framework concerning how universities will achieve compliance to conflicting claims by strategies like compartmentalization and blending stipulations of both logics. Empirical results based on a large-scale survey of 26 universities in eight European countries display how compatibility is achieved through highly differentiated adoption of logics that depends on the task considered. The results reveal that the strength of NPM pressures strongly affects the adoption of managerial practices within universities yet has no significant effect on the academic characteristics