Suchergebnisse

The 5th RISIS Policymakers Session was organized on the 23rd of September in an online format (2 pm – 4 pm). RISIS focused on the heterogeneity of European Higher Institutions with a presentation entitled The heterogeneity of European Higher Education Institutions. A configurational approach by Professor Benedetto Lepori USI (Università della Svizzera italiana). Higher Education Institutions are highly heterogeneous in terms of their profile, governance, and output. This represents a challenge for policies as well, as some issues will be relevant only for a subset of HEI and differentiated policies at the European and national level will be required. For instance, the whole policy discussion on research excellence will be relevant only for a few hundreds of universities, against nearly 3,000 institutions covered by the European Tertiary Education Register (ETER). During the Policymakers Session, Dr. Benedetto Lepori illustrated a proposal of classification of European HEIs based on the extended version of ETER developed in the RISIS project and using novel statistical methods introduced in the RISIS methodological activity. This classification identifies five main classes along two main dimensions, i.e. the balance between research and education and the orientation towards natural and technical sciences vs. social sciences and humanities. Dr Marc Saillard, National Research Agency (FRANCE) added a valuable contribution, describing the evolution and transformation of French academic world in the last decade. Many Universities and Research Centers in France merged together to become more competitive developing projects together. ; Video of discussion: https://youtu.be/rfSFS3biv0w

AbstractThe goal of this paper is to contribute toward bridging the gap between policy design and implementation by focusing on domains, such as education, healthcare and community services, where policy implementation is largely left to the autonomous decision of public service providers, which are strategic actors themselves. More specifically, we suggest that two characteristics of policy design spaces in which policies are designed, i.e., the level of ideational coherence and the prevailing function of the adopted policy instruments, generate systematic patterns of responses in terms of the extent of compliance with policy goals, the presence of strategic gaming and possible defiance. We illustrate our model through a contrastive case study of the introduction of performance-based funding in the higher education sector in four European countries (France, Italy, Norway, and the United Kingdom). Our analysis displays that policy designs chosen by governments to steer public systems have different trade-offs in terms of responses of the public organizations involved that are essential to effectively implement governmental policies. The model we are proposing provides therefore a framework to understand how these interactions unfold in specific contexts, what are their effects on the achievement of policy goals and how policymakers could exploit their degrees of freedom in policy design to reduce unwanted effects.

The differentiation of profiles of institutions over the past several decades emphasizes their relevance for higher education. Unlike in the United States, there is currently no broad classification of higher education institutions in Europe. Building on European Tertiary Education Register data, we propose a new comprehensive and cross-country classification in six classes that recognizes the diversity of functions and specializations of institutions within European higher education.

The aim of this study was to examine how institutional barriers arising from policy decisions influence the level of participation of third-party countries in European Framework Programs (EU-FPs). To achieve this, we contrasted the effect of EU funding restrictions following Switzerland's 2014 reclassification as a "third country" in Horizon 2020, and the political uncertainties resulting from the 2016 Brexit vote in the United Kingdom (UK). We compared the participation patterns of Swiss and UK higher education institutions (HEIs) with control groups of similar European HEIs over time and, complementarily, analyzed changes in the participation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Our results showed that the Brexit-induced uncertainty had stronger negative effects than the Swiss reclassification, which was, however, characterized by effective EU funding restrictions. In both cases, the negative impact of institutional barriers was stronger for the more central HEIs in EU-FP networks. These results suggest that the effect of institutional barriers is closely linked to consortium building mechanisms, where research collaboration requires stability and projection over the long term. Regarding individual grants, the impact was stronger for Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions than for European Research Council grants, suggesting that a researcher's mobility is affected by political uncertainties. Finally, in the UK case, we observed a steep decrease in the participation of SMEs. Based on these results, we suggest that a stable framework of participation and a clear ruling on relationships with the EU for what concerns people's mobility and economic relationships are key to fostering the participation of third-party countries. Full paper : https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11192-020-03810-0 Luke Georghiou, University of Manchester has been involved as discussant. ; The presentation is based on the paper: Cavallaro, M., Lepori, B. Institutional barriers to participation in EU framework programs: ...

AbstractThe research policy (RP) arena has been transforming in recent years, turning into a policy mix encompassing the diversity of policy instruments embedded in, and following different policy rationales and aims. Its complexity defies attempts for complex comparative analysis and eventually, a better understanding of what kind of (mixes of) funding instruments work better than others and in which situations. In this article, we address this gap by developing a conceptual framework that allows us to build the policy mix idea into the analysis of research funding instruments (RFIs), by relying on four dimensions: policy rationales, implementation modalities, policy actors, and the funding instruments interactions. We base our work on a careful literature review, especially drawing on the work of researchers who have developed similar frameworks in other policy areas, bringing it together with that of RP scholars, capturing the issues that are key to analyzing and understanding RFIs.

Understanding knowledge co-creation in key emerging areas of European research is a critical issue for policy makers in order to analyse impact and make strategic decisions. However, current methods for characterising and visualising the field have limitations concerning the changing nature of research, the differences in language and topic structure between policies and scientific topics, and the coverage of a broad range of scientific and political issues that have different characteristics. In this work, we discuss the novel use of ontologies and semantic technologies as a way to bridge the linguistic and conceptual gap between policy questions and data sources. Our experience suggests that a proper interlinking between intellectual tasks and the use of advanced techniques for language processing is key for the success of this endeavour.

The aim of this article is to review the potential of Science and Technology (S&T) Indicators for the evaluation of research programs. We suggest that indicators are a useful complement to other evaluation methodologies (surveys, case studies, panels) for summative evaluations, where the focus is on measuring program results and the degree of achievement of program objectives. However, we argue that indicators have a much broader potential to support formative evaluation, where the focus is on learning from past experience in order to design future research programs. Indicators, for example, are a valuable support for debates between social actors concerning strategic choices about research funding. We conclude by suggesting what needs to be done to realize this potential.

In the framework of a European project coordinated by the Centre of Higher Education Policy Studies (CHEPS) of the University of Twente, we performed an in-depth analysis of the changes in governance and funding of higher education in Switzerland since the mid 1990s. In this context, we also developed hypotheses on the impact of these changes on system's performance. This analysis is based on existing literature on Swiss higher education and on extensive documentary analysis, as well as on a set of about 15 phone interviews with decision-makers in Swiss higher education, who were asked to provide their view on the impact of the reforms on the system's performance. The setting of the study is strongly influenced by the request of the European Commission to provide evidence of impacts of reforms. Despite the focus on applied research, our study should also be of interest for the scholarly community. A detailed report on Switzerland is available, while the summary report covering all European countries should be published before the end of 2010. Adapted from the source document.