Open Access

In this paper, we compare the efficiency of the Italian and German universities in the process of transforming public funding into the multiple outputs of a university, i.e. graduating students, publishing research, and patenting activity. We do this with a particular focus on the policies implemented following the financial crisis in 2008. Using a sample of 133 public universities, of which 73 public universities in Germany and 60 public universities in Italy observed over the period 2006–2011 we find that Italian universities perform significantly better in terms of output maximization than German universities. The crisis does not show a general impact, while the treatment effect indicates that Italian universities coped better during the crisis than their German counterparts at a highly significant level.

We examine the political power exerted by Italian rectors by investigating the preferential treatment received by the organisational subunits they belong to in terms of personnel resource allocation. During the rectors’ mandate, their organisational subunits tend to grow significantly more (by ∼9%) than the others. The effect persists even after the implementation of the New public management-inspired policy – the Gelmini reform.

When a pronounced taste for science leads researchers to self-select themselves in academia, higher education systems must be able to protect it. By relying on the economic theory of higher education, the international mobility and the sociology of science literature, we compare the working condition in the four major European higher education systems: the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Italy. Remuneration level especially its variable component is of paramount importance for all researchers. Job security in terms of tenure-track positions and habilitation process as well as the career length are relevant for early-career scholars, whereas the institutional prestige and the funding availability together with the disciplinary-centre approach as well as the language biases are significant conditions for international researchers specifically. According to the target, policymakers should rely on specific leverages to increase a country competitiveness.

In recent years, societies all over the world have been confronted with new challenges, such as the increasing pace of climate change, stimulating a growing debate about the role of higher education institutions (HEIs) to help tackle these grand challenges. Consequently, this impacts how technology transfer is pursued and what societies want it to produce, making the third mission in the higher education context also a green mission. Thus, excellence in sustainability complements excellence in research and teaching, resulting in a demand for new metrics to rank and position HEIs globally in terms of their sustainability efforts. A widely accepted and prominent ranking has been established by the University of Indonesia, the UI GreenMetric ranking. Since its founding a decade ago, substantial literature has been published about this ranking to examine and evaluate it from multiple perspectives and with various methodologies. This paper summarizes the body of literature on the UI GreenMetric and provides a critical analysis, indicating a tendency towards a self-selection reporting bias of the participating universities and countries, which demonstrates a potential use of the ranking as a means of greenwashing.