Improving study success and diversity in Dutch higher education using performance agreements
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Improving study success and diversity in Dutch higher education using performance agreements Ben Jongbloed 1
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& Frans Kaiser & Don F. Westerheijden
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Received: 30 April 2019 / Accepted: 3 December 2019/ # The Author(s) 2019
Abstract
More and more governments have started to introduce elements of performance in the funding mechanisms for their higher education institutions. An example is a performance agreement: a contract signed between the funding authority and an individual higher education provider. In the Netherlands, a policy experiment involving performance agreements was concluded in 2016. We analyse whether the agreements actually have helped achieve the goals of improving student completion rates, educational quality and increasing the diversity in educational offerings. We present some indicators relating to these goals and discuss what can be learned from the performance agreements experiment in the Netherlands. Keywords Tertiary education . Public funding . Higher education policy . Performance based funding . New public management . Diversity
Introduction The models for funding public higher education institutions (hereafter: universities) vary enormously across countries. In line with the new public management-inspired idea (Ferlie et al. 1996) that funds should flow to institutions where performance is manifest, many countries have implemented performance-based funding of some sort. In performance-based funding, the recurrent public budget (or core grant) that the university receives is to a lesser or greater extent made dependent on a set of performance measures or output criteria. One way of doing this is to include performance indicators in the funding formulas that determine the core grant per institution. Another option is for the funding authorities to make an agreement with the universities on delivering a particular set of services in the period ahead. In the latter case, a performance contract is negotiated where the university is rewarded for delivering on its
* Ben Jongbloed [email protected]
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Center for Higher Education Policy Studies (CHEPS), University of Twente, PO Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands
Tertiary Education and Management
strategic plan (Jongbloed and Vossensteyn 2016). According to De Boer et al. (2015), the most frequently used performance indicators used in the funding formulas of OECD countries are the number of degree completions (Bachelor, Master and PhD), the ECTS credits earned by students and measures of research performance (e.g. research quality, publication output, competitive research revenues generated). The Netherlands is no exception to this, and for quite a number of years the Dutch funding authorities have employed a performance-driven funding formula that determines the core grants of research universities and universities of applied sciences. In recent years, performance agreements were added to the Dutch higher education funding system. This was done in a policy experiment carried out over a five-year period (2012–2016). A
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