This paper provides a new and systematic characterization of 488 universities (HEIs) coming from 11 European countries: Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and UK. Using micro indicators built on the integrated Aquameth database, we characterize the European university landscape according to the following dimensions: history of foundation of universities, dynamics of growth, specialization patterns, subject mix, funding composition, differentiation of the offering profile and productivity.

European governments increasingly employ competitive university funding to improve performance in higher education. The framework that is developed in this paper suggests a donor-specific trade-off between fostering best performing universities and increasing university efficiency when introducing competitive funding in the university sector. We test this assertion based on a university-level panel dataset across eight European countries from 1994-2006. Estimating a simultaneous two-stage Stochastic Frontier Approach, we find that international public funds decrease the productivity of the best performing universities, which suggests a non-negligible effect because of the administrative burden induced by competitive funding. However, the competition for international public funds also disciplines universities as evidenced by a positive impact on efficiency. Conversely, tuition fees enhance the productivity of the best performing universities but increase the spread of universities with lower productivity, which suggests a strong sorting effect

Since the late 1990s, the European higher education system has had to face deep structural changes. With the public authorities seeking to create an environment of quasi-markets in the higher education sector, the increased competition induced by recent reforms has pushed all publicly financed higher education institutions to use their resources more efficiently. Higher education institutions increasingly now aim at differentiating themselves from their competitors in terms of the range of outputs they produce. Assuming that different market positioning strategies will have different effects on the performance of higher education institutions, this paper explores the existence of economies of scale and scope in the German higher education sector. Using an input-oriented distance function approach, we estimate the economies of scale and scope and the technical efficiency for 154 German higher education institutions from 2001 through 2007. Our results suggest that comprehensive universities should indeed orientate their activities to the concept of a full-university that combines teaching and research activities across a broad range of subjects. In contrast, praxis-oriented small and medium-sized universities of applied sciences should specialise in the teaching and research activities they conduct.

En el año 2019, se publicó una revisión de la calidad de las publicaciones de la RIDEP que contenían un análisis factorial exploratorio (AFE) en los seis últimos números hasta el segundo volumen de 2018. En dicho trabajo se exploraba la adherencia de los artículos de la revista a los estándares y recomendaciones. En el presente trabajo se amplía la evaluación, analizando todas las publicaciones con un AFE desde el tercer volumen de 2018 hasta el tercer volumen de 2022. Se evaluaron (a) el diseño, (b) aspectos previos al análisis, (c) la ejecución del AFE y (d) la información escrita de 83 AFE publicados en la RIDEP. En general, la calidad de la información de los artículos con AFE publicados en la RIDEP ha mejorado frente a la anterior revisión, pero con elementos donde sigue siendo necesario un esfuerzo. Se debaten algunas recomendaciones para autores, revisores y la revista.