Carmen Pérez-Esparrells

Is Expenditure on Higher Education Per Student Converging across EU-15 Countries?.

This article examines the trend in expenditure per student at higher education institutions in the EU-15 countries, during the period 1998–2006. The results show that there was a tendency towards convergence (as measured by sigma and beta convergence analysis). The ratio of convergence is higher after 2001, suggesting that the implementation of European-level policies (e.g. the Bologna Declaration and the Lisbon Strategy) had an impact not only in the political arena, but also at an economic level. The convergence has been driven more by private financial resources than by public ones, supporting evidence for a gradual transformation of the patterns of financing higher education in Europe. There are elements that continue to influence the level of expenditure of individual countries; mainly their wealth as measured by GDP per capita.

Comparing university performance by legal status: a Malmquist-type index approach for the case of the Spanish higher education system

New public management and increasing levels of competition driven by global rankings are bringing the managerial practices of public and private higher education institutions closer together. However, these two types of institutions still maintain different objectives and traditions and enjoy different degrees of autonomy that are reflected in their internal organisational structures. We study the relative efficiency and productivity performance of private and public universities in Spain through two adaptations of the Malmquist Index. Results show that, in 2009/2010, the greater flexibility of private universities meant a better adjustment between inputs and outputs in the private sector. However, in 2013/2014, public universities had caught up with private universities. Because of the economic crisis, the inputs of public universities have decreased, but this decrease had not fully impacted their results in 2013/2014.

New Strategies of European Technical Universities in the Emerging Competitive Environment of Global Rankings

In recent years, the higher education (HE) sector has undergone a drastic transformation due to the globalisation of knowledge. World university rankings have supported this process and have fostered the consolidation of the global market of HE (Salmi, 2009; Altbach & Salmi, 2011). These global rankings (mainly, the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THE), and the Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings (QS)) seem to take into account a wide spectrum of variables to rank universities.

Do the technical universities exhibit distinct behaviour in global university rankings? A Times Higher Education (THE) case study

Abstract Technical Universities (TUs) exhibit a distinct ranking performance in comparison with other universities. In this paper we identify 137 TUs included in the THE Ranking (2017 edition) and analyse their scores statistically. The results highlight the existence of clusters of TUs showing a general high performance in the Industry Income category and, in many cases, a low performance on Research and Teaching. Finally, the global score weights were simulated, creating several scenarios that confirmed that the majority of TUs (except those with a world-class status) would increase their final scores if industrial income was accounted for at the levels parametrised.