Value creation and related measurement in universities. An empirical application

Abstract

The growing normative, financial, organizational and didactic autonomy, which has interested European universities, has stimulated the monitoring processes on efficiency, efficacy, and operational methods with which public resources are managed. Moreover, the association between financial funds, along with sustained costs and service quality, has strongly increased top management's attention to costs reduction and, above all, to the final user's satisfaction. In this new scenario, evaluation comes out to be the natural consequence of the strong universities' autonomist pressure. Therefore, this paper, after approaching universities' structural and systemic assets, as well as their relationship with the referring contest, analyses specific (related to the formative offer) and global university's performances measurement methods and evaluation difficulties. The exposed theoretical analyses are completed with an empirical application about an engineering degree course self-assessment.

Design of a university course quality by Teaching Experiments and Student Feedback (TESF)

“…Be an instructor, to lead to effective learning All roles of buyer, user and partners of education - Karapetrovic et al (1999) Customer Operator Wallace (1999) Primary customer Supplier Canic and McCarthy (2000) Primary customer - Chinn and Hilgers (2000) User Instructor as corrector and collaborator Bier and Cornesky (2001) Product in progress and users of the curriculum - Emery et al (2001) Unfinished product/product in progress Customer of the students Clewes (2003) Consumer of higher education -Harvey (2003) Receive services - Politis and Sisko (2004) Customer - Polese and Monetta (2006) Primary client -Total Quality Management 691 contents, timetables, rooms, etc. ); course designer, since he/she is called to design the specific contents and the modalities for delivering lessons, practices and exams; responsible for the educational process, since he/she is called to respond to the results of his/her work (Mergen et al, 2000); course supplier of the course, through the delivering of lessons, practices and exams; assessor of the main output of the course, i.e.…”

“…Conversely, very little attention has been paid to the evaluation of teaching and to student satisfaction (Lawrence & McCollough, 2004); sometimes it has been considered in a wider framework considering all services offered by a university (Polese & Monetta, 2006;Srikatanyoo & Gnoth, 2005).…”

“…He/she, more or less implicitly, has more roles in respect of the course . From the student perspective, every course is a service supplied by the university where he/she is enrolled (Harvey, 2003); in this sense, the student is a user of the service-course, and he/she is a direct customer of the university (Canic & McCarthy, 2000;Owlia & Aspinwall, 1996a;Polese & Monetta, 2006;Wallace, 1999).…”

Reconfiguring the higher education value chain

“…The earlier research factored in this limitation and proposed service sector-specific value chains. However, this concept has been the reference point of research on strategy for services in general and higher education in particular (Sison et al, 2000;Gabriel, 2005;Polese & Monetta, 2006;Mora et al, 2008;Makkar et al, 2008).…”

“…A large chunk of the academic's role has been disintegrated and the thrust on teaching and learning has been replaced by other value-creating activities. Therefore a discussion on this theme would be lopsided if only the traditionally didactic part of higher education institutions (Gabriel, 2005;Polese & Monetta, 2006;Makkar et al, 2008) is factored in while configuring/proposing any theoretical framework of the value chain.…”