Some European governments aim to promote their universities’ performance in international rankings by creating financial incentives. This column explains that such policies can backfire, taking the example of recent research on Italy. Policy makers should be very cautious in using students’ academic performance as a proxy for university value.
Manuel Bagues, Natalia Zinovyeva, Mauro Sylos Labini, 10 September 2008
Philippe Aghion, Mathias Dewatripont, Caroline Hoxby, Andreu Mas-Colell, André Sapir, 01 October 2007
With few exceptions, European universities do very poorly in international rankings. Recent empirical work suggests that spending and budgetary autonomy account for the poor performance of most European universities on the one hand, and the excellent performance of the few European stars on the other.
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