Abstract:

The main functions of Higher Education Institutions (HEI) include teaching, research, and university extension (the so-called third mission), which are also commonly referred to as university missions. It has to be noted though that through the development of these three university missions, Higher Education System (HES) need to commit themselves to the achievement of at least, fifteen different types of higher education policies and goals, what in fact implies higher capabilities and additional functions for HEIs. Therefore, this study focuses on the functions and expected outcomes that are relevant to rating the performance of HES, and their relationship with global trends of diversification of the HES. We develop a systemic perspective because it allows for a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between inputs (I), outputs (O) and outcomes (O) of the system. This research sheds light on what and how is to be considered HEI functions and capabilities from a systemic approach. We have called "function" to the contribution from to HEIs to achieve the system’s goals (outcomes), and "capability" to the HEIs outputs needed to achieve one contribution. To achieve this goal, an integrative literature review (ILR) is carried out. 207 articles that estimate efficiency at national scale were analyzed in detail. It was identified four relations Input-Output (RI-O), in order of frequency were: Research/Teaching RI-O, Teaching RI-O, Research/Transfer RI-O, and Knowledge Transfer RI-O. Overall, 19 functions were identified, 7 of them have resulted in flows directed towards the achievement of social benefits and 8 were interpreted as functions that underpin the capabilities of a HES to provide services. The attainment and completion, generation of new knowledge, and doctoral research comprise the functions with the largest portion of efforts of performance assessment. The capability of HEI in mobilizing resources from competitive funds, attracting talent, and generating revenues from knowledge transfer were most relevant capabilities assessed. When comparing to the different types of HE policies and goals the findings show that higher efforts are aimed to assess functions and capabilities of the HEI for innovating and knowledge transfer. Likewise, they clearly demonstrate that the university extension functions related to social engagement and regional development not yet considered in the HES performance evaluations. The effort to evaluate the function concerning the employability of the graduates is recent and less frequent. And, the internationalization of HES remains being the largest ‘unknown’ based on the results from the ILR. Regarding the global trends of the HES diversification, this results shed there is a clear relationship between the functions evaluated with to current models of the innovative University and entrepreneurial University. In the last decade, coinciding with the introduction of these models, it is evident the appearance and recurrent measurement of indicators on the generation of intellectual assets, entrepreneurship activities and the capacity to mobilize resources for research. Our results show that there are clear differences in the way the functions and capabilities are modeled. They show which RI-O and factors are considered in order to judge the performance of HES. They provide essential information for policymakers to assess the performance of their HES from a systemic perspective.

Keywords:

Higher education systems, function, performance assessment, literature review, integrative, efficiency.