The shift towards entrepreneurial universities and the relevance of third-party funding of business and economics units in Austria: a research note

Melanie Wiener,Robert J Breitenecker,Daniela Maresch

doi:10.1007/s11846-019-00359-y

Melanie Wiener, Robert J Breitenecker + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11846-019-00359-y

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Abstract

The importance of public and private third-party funding of universities has changed over the last decades. However, the knowledge about how universities finance their research are rather limited. We aim to fill this gap and investigate the funding structure of universities and how third-party funding has changed over time. In our explorative analysis, we use publicly available data of four Austrian universities. We analyze this data at university level as well as the level of the faculty of business and economics. We provide insight into the development and structure of third-party funding and conclude that universities’ funding structures differ and has developed over time.

Highlights

In recent decades, university funding has changed considerably across Europe
While the overall amount of third-party funding has increased in all universities between 2007 and 2017, the development of shares of third-part funding compared to core funding differs among universities
This paper aims at exploring the role of third-party funding at Austrian universities between 2007 and 2017

Summary

Introduction

University funding has changed considerably across Europe. National governments have started to implement new allocation mechanisms by tying the funding provided to universities to their performance. Earlier research has revealed that competition and output-based incentives do not always result in a higher level of efficiency and productivity. Rather, they may have some unintended negative consequences, such as a mainstream focus and weaker societal impacts Universities were public bodies: the government had direct influence on their management and supported their activities via core funding, which covered the universities’ costs. Governments have started to relate funding to performance by introducing performance-based funding systems (e.g. Geuna and Martin 2003; Hicks 2012) This implies that universities receive (part of) their core funding based on performance indicators, such as publication output, third-party research funding, or the number of Ph.D. students (for an overview of performance indicators see OECD 2010).

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