Abstract:

Due to high competitiveness and mobility the performance of universities is required to measure up to not only national but international quality standards: universities compete internationally and especially on the European level, even if the relevant financial and regulatory framework are still shaped within a national context and considerable differences between national university systems still exist.

Based on an internationally harmonised dataset of individual universities, the paper undertakes an examination of the Austrian university system in comparison to a number of selected European countries. It uses different inputs (number of researchers at different levels and in different disciplines, financial endowment) and outputs (number of graduates and PhDs, publications) and compares individual universities with universities with similar endowments.

A comparative, comprehensive assessment of individual universities
• may not be limited to individual dimensions such as research alone
• must take differences in scientific orientation and availability of resources into consideration
• must be able to do justice to the complexity of the correlations between the various inputs and outputs, and
• must be flexible enough to address the differences in these correlations between individual universities.

Applying Data Envelopment Analysis the paper proposes a strategy of implicitly using universities that are both structurally similar and endowed with similar resources as points of comparison and reference in order to be able to evaluate the competitive capacity of Austrian universities. Both one-dimensional comparative assessments of data and the direct comparison of unsuitable subjects are no adequate instruments, as the multi-dimensionality of input-output relations of universities and relevant context information are neglected.

Keywords:

higher education system, education policy, university performance, data.