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Performance Management and Governance in Public Universities: Challenges and Opportunities Read chapter Read first chapter

2022 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

Transparency and Accountability in Higher Education as a Response to External Stakeholders and Rules: A Comparison Between Three Country-Case Studies

Authors : Anna Francesca Pattaro, Patrícia Moura e Sá, Johan A. M. de Kruijf

Published in: Governance and Performance Management in Public Universities

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have been increasingly under pressure to enhance accountability towards their stakeholders and to disclose relevant, updated, and reliable information about their performance in terms of teaching/education, research, and other activities, often labeled “third mission”, aiming, for instance, at spreading and validating research in society.
Based on an exploratory qualitative research, build through the analysis of literature, of national legislation, and of the information disclosed in different institutional websites, the purpose of this chapter is to offer a general overview of the present accountability requirements and of the instruments or resolutions, rule-driven but also voluntary, adopted in three European countries used as Country-Case Studies: the Netherlands, Portugal, and Italy. In addition, this contribution aims at proposing a general assessment of the degree of transparency and accountability of public-funded HEIs.
Findings indicate that there is quite a strong emphasis on accountability towards public or private funders/sponsors and to actual and future students and their families. It has also been realized that the weakest area in terms of transparency of HEIs’ performance is that of transfer and consulting activities, contrasting to the attention paid to the disclosure of teaching and education performance information. Overall, HEIs in the three countries seem to be transparent but especially towards expert stakeholders who know exactly what to look for and where, since performance information is often scattered and available on wide documents, making the access and usability of information relatively low.
The current research aims at contributing to the literature on transparency and accountability, particularly on performance information disclosure in the specific environment of public-funded higher education institutions, from an international comparative perspective, while offering to managers and policymakers some hints on how to assess their current transparency practices, as well as some suggestions about possible future amendments and improvements. Clearly, additional investigation is needed to further validate some findings and to introduce other transparency dimensions and national contexts.

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previous chapter Performance Management and Governance in Public Universities: Challenges and Opportunities
next chapter An Analysis of Methodologies, Incentives, and Effects of Performance Evaluation in Higher Education: The English Experience
Footnotes
1
Censis, Centri Studi Investimenti Sociali (i.e., Center for Social Investment Studies), is a socio-economic research institute founded in 1964. https://​www.​censis.​it/​
 
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Metadata
Title
Transparency and Accountability in Higher Education as a Response to External Stakeholders and Rules: A Comparison Between Three Country-Case Studies
Authors
Anna Francesca Pattaro
Patrícia Moura e Sá
Johan A. M. de Kruijf
Copyright Year
2022
Book
Governance and Performance Management in Public Universities

Print ISBN: 978-3-030-85697-7

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-85698-4

Copyright Year: 2022

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85698-4_2

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