Abstract
This study, which aims to investigate some potential effects derived from the adoption of performance-oriented funding in the higher education system, is focused on competitive allocative mechanism to provide universities with the staff recruitment budget in the Italian Higher Education System using panel data spanning the period 2012–2018 for 58 public universities. Results show that the geographical area in which universities operate influences their capacity to increase performance and thus financial resources. Indeed, universities located in Northern areas, the wealthier part of Italy, received a higher amount of resources than those located in the rest of the country. These findings reveal the key role played by external factors, which are beyond the control of management, in universities’ capacity to achieve better performance. Results also suggest that policy-makers should identify the correct trade-off between the quest for higher performance within the Italian Higher Education System and equity in resource allocation.
Highlights
The rationale behind the adoption of performance in higher education (HE) financing is to reward the best-performing institutions to stimulate higher competitiveness, forcing the worseperforming institutions to change their strategy in order to raise their performance (Hicks, 2012)
With regard to model 1, the coefficients for Northeast and Northwest were both positive and statistically significant (p < 0.01), revealing that the universities located in these geographical areas received an average Total Punto Organico (PO) per 1000 of about 0.252 and 0.192, higher compared to the reference South, while the coefficients for both Centre and Islands are not statistically significant
The purpose of this study was to investigate some potential effects of the adoption of performance-related mechanisms used to provide universities’ staff recruitment budget in the Italian Higher Education System (IHES)
Summary
The rationale behind the adoption of performance in higher education (HE) financing is to reward the best-performing institutions to stimulate higher competitiveness, forcing the worseperforming institutions to change their strategy in order to raise their performance (Hicks, 2012). The adoption of performance measures in HE funding allocation can lead to unintended consequences (Umbricht et al, 2017), such as opportunistic behaviours, gaming practices, or the so-called Matthew effect. These can widen the gap between universities (Jeon & Kim, 2018; Merton, 1968) and may produce or perpetuate inequalities linked to historical trends or contextual factors beyond the control of universities’ management. To contribute to the debate on this topic, this work aims to understand if the mechanism introduced to allocate the recruitment budget has led to an allocation of resources that could undermine equity between universities in terms of government funding. Using data provided by the Ministry of Education, a multivariate quantitative analysis was carried out, aimed at understanding if the geographical location of a university exerts an impact on the resources available for recruitment policies
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