Europe’s universities lack ‘genuine autonomy’ from state control – EUA Report
A new EUA study (published today - 30 November) analysing and comparing university autonomy and governance across 33 European countries highlights that universities still lack genuine autonomy.
While many governments, the university sector and indeed the European Commission have recognised that increased autonomy for universities will be a crucial step towards modernising universities in the 21st century, the new report highlights that in practice public authorities still play too central a role in the regulation of the higher education system and, in a large number of countries, still exert direct control.
Despite the fact that public authorities in a number of European countries have moved away from direct state control towards more ‘indirect’ steering mechanisms, universities generally still lack autonomy in many crucial areas, in particular in terms of managing finances. At a time when the overall levels of public funding in education are stagnating across Europe, and universities are increasingly being asked to look for alternative funding sources, EUA believes this lack of autonomy is a real threat for the sustainability of Europe’s universities.
The study focuses on more than 30 different indicators in four key areas of autonomy: organisational, academic, financial and staffing autonomy.
Report author Thomas Estermann, explains: “This report underlines that, while there is broad agreement between stakeholders on the importance of university autonomy, there has been much less success in transforming this from rhetoric into reality. Particularly where financial issues are concerned, if universities are not free to act in the interest of their students and staff, then the other dimensions of autonomy may as well only exist in theory.”
This report by EUA will form the first basis of a new two-year project to develop a scorecard that will benchmark university autonomy (on the national level) across Europe. The Autonomy Scorecard will be a major tool both at the national level and at the individual institutional level, serving as a reference for national governments wishing to benchmark their progress on governance reforms vis-à-vis other systems, whilst also helping to raise awareness among universities of the differences that exist in Europe. The launch of the Scorecard is due to take place at the end of the project in the winter of 2011.
Download the full report for more information.
Published on: Friday, 27 November 2009 11:50