European university funding and financial autonomy. A study on the degree of diversification of university budget and the share of competitive funding

• Main Authors: Fernández Zubieta, Ana, Dominicis, Laura de, Elena Pérez, Susana
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: European Union. Publications Office 2011
• Subjects: European higher education systems; Norway; Iceland
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10261/90552; http://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/111111111/16338

This report has been prepared by the Institute for Prospective Technology Studies (IPTS) of the EU’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) as a formal deliverable under Work Package 3 (Monitoring and analysis of the reforms of research universities in the ERA) of the FP7 ERAWATCH2 contract. ERAWATCH is a cooperative undertaking between DG RTD and DG JRC. It is a strategic intelligence service designed to support evidence-based policy making in the research field in Europe and to contribute to the realisation of the European Research Area (ERA). It aims to provide a better understanding of national and regional research systems and the environment in which they operate. European higher education systems have experienced important changes over recent decades, leading to higher autonomy in most cases. The more autonomous a university is, then it should, in principle, be able to better compete in obtaining funds from different sources, such as competitive funds, contracts with private companies, and donations from the non-profit sector. This could make institutions less dependent on one single stream of income and more able to adapt to a changing environment. The main objective of this report is to investigate the structure of the budget in a sample of research-active European universities and to analyse to what extent the level of financial autonomy effects the diversification of their budget and the amount of competitive funding they receive. The study covers 200 research-active universities from 33 European Research Area (ERA) countries (27 Member States and Croatia, Iceland, Israel, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey) within the framework of the 'European Observatory of Research-Active Universities and National Public Research Funding Agencies' (UniObs). The criteria followed to select the list of universities in the sample are based on research performance and country representativeness. The main findings of the study are as follows: • Looking at the general budget, 70 % of the total university income comes from government ...