The need to measure and benchmark university governance practices at institutional level has been growing, yet there is a lack of a comprehensive, weighted indicator system to facilitate the process. The paper discusses the development of university governance indicators and their weighting system using a three-round Delphi method. Discussions, a questionnaire, and interviews were used in Round 1 to 3, respectively, to collect experts' opinions to construct the indicator list and indicator weights, and to shed light on the divergence of expert judgements on some aspects. Non-parametric statistical techniques were applied to analyse the survey data. Ninety-one indicators grouped in five dimensions of university governance, namely Management and Direction, Participation, Accountability, Autonomy and Transparency, were proposed and rated in terms of their importance. The preliminary results show relatively high levels of importance for all of the proposed indicators, thus none was excluded. The weighting of the indicators and factors vary remarkably. Among the five dimensions, Participation is found to be the least important; experts' consensus is found to be low in Participation and Transparency. The study results also provide important implications to researchers and practitioners in university governance.

The number of contact hours, one of the important institutional context factors, was examined and compared between Dutch and Vietnamese higher education at institute and student levels in Psychology and Business and/or Economics specializations. The quantity of contact hours per credit point given by institutions was investigated in a number of Dutch and Vietnamese universities. Additionally, 104 students in Groningen, the Netherlands, and 140 students in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, participated in the survey with a self-reported and self-assessed questionnaire on their study time allocation. Beside contact hours, other learning process related factors such as study activities, motivation, quality of instruction, and generic skills were examined to provide a better insight into these two systems. Results showed that Vietnamese students had significantly higher number of contact hours than Dutch students while their generic skills, motivation and time spent on independent study were a lot lower.

No abstract