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The economic crisis has its roots in the financial services industry, but it certainly impacted the higher education in a way that has far-reaching implications for the colleges and universities in the United States. With unemployment rates of 8% and above, it made it difficult for families to send their kids to colleges and as a result colleges faced decline in enrollments and pressure to cut costs. Discount rates at almost all universities with an average size of 8,000 or less went up significantly. Academic departments at various universities came under pressure to get leaner and perform better with fewer resources. In this study, we benchmark the financial performance of public universities and private universities against each other as well as against themselves over the years by using data envelopment analysis model. The study also compares universities, public and private, with less than 3,000 students and more than 3,000 students against each other as well as over a period of time. The study is important as it will help university policy makers identify their strengths and weaknesses so that they can capitalize on their strong academic programs and make changes to fix weaker academic programs.

The University of California at Berkeley now delivers more to the public of California than it ever has, and it does this on the basis of proportionally less funding by the State government than it has ever received. This claim may come as a surprise, since it is often said that Berkeley is in the process of privatizing, becoming less of a public university and more in the service of private interests. To the contrary, as the State’s commitment to higher education and social-welfare programs has declined, UC Berkeley has struggled to preserve and even expand its public role, while struggling simultaneously to retain its competitive excellence as a research university. This paper delineates how UC Berkeley has striven to retain its public character in the face of severe financial pressures. A summary of the indicators invoked can be found in the Table near the end of the text. This paper then addresses the sustainability and generalizability of the Berkeley strategy.

During the 20th century, the United States rapidly developed its research capacity by fostering a broad base of institutions of higher education led by a small core of highly productive research universities. By the latter half of the century, scientists in a greatly expanded number of universities across the United States published the largest annual number of scholarly publications in STEM+ fields from one nation. This expansion was not a product of some science and higher education centralized plan, rather it flowed from the rise of mass tertiary education in this nation. Despite this unprecedented productivity, some scholars suggested that universities would cease to lead American scientific research. This chapter investigates the ways that the United States’ system of higher education underpinned American science into the 21st century.

The authors present a historical and sociological case study of the development of the United States’ system of higher education and its associated research capacity. The historical and sociological context informs our analysis of data from the SPHERE team dataset, which was compiled from the Thomson Reuters’ Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) database.

We argue that American research capacity is a function of the United States’ broad base of thousands of public and broadly accessible institutions of higher education plus its smaller, elite sector of “super” research universities; and that the former serve to culturally support the later. Unlike previous research, we find that American higher education is not decreasing its contributions to the nation’s production of STEM+ scholarship.

The chapter provides empirical analyses, which support previous sociological theory about mass higher education and super research universities.

This paper aims to investigate the relation between the creditworthiness of US institutions of higher education and their student selectivity (i.e. demand and quality).

The authors study whether the impact of student selectivity differs across public vs private universities; across the credit quality of the given public university’s state; and across the level of state appropriations for the given public university.

The authors find that student quality and demand measures are significantly associated with their corresponding institution’s creditworthiness, especially for private universities.

For public universities the association is weak and, contrary to the expectations, does not depend on the state credit quality or level of state funding. The findings are robust to the inclusion of control variables.

The purpose of this paper is to synthesize insights from previous accounting, performance measurement (PM) and accountability research into the rapidly emerging field of knowledge-intensive public organizations (KIPOs). In so doing, it draws upon insights from previous literature and other papers included in this special issue of Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal.

The paper reviews academic analysis and insights provided in the academic literature on accounting, PM and accountability changes in KIPOs, such as universities and healthcare organizations, and paves the way for future research in this area.

The literature review shows that a growing number of studies are focusing on the hybridization of different KIPOs, not only in terms of accounting tools (e.g. performance indicators, budgeting and reporting) but also in relation to individual actors (e.g. professionals and managers) that may have divergent values and thus act according to multiple logics. It highlights many areas in which further robust academic research is needed to guide developments of hybrid organizations in policy and practice.

This paper provides academics, regulators and decision makers with relevant insights into issues and aspects of accounting, PM and accountability in hybrid organizations that need further theoretical development and empirical evidence to help inform improvements in policy and practice.

The paper provides the growing number of academic researchers in this emerging area with a literature review and agenda upon which they can build their research.

Considering a micro performance perspective, the purpose of this paper is to analyze whether and to what extent the adoption of better performance management systems could improve the performance levels of a public university.

With reference to a period of four years (2011-2014), the quality of performance management systems of 29 Italian universities (response rate: 48 percent) was examined and the possible effects on performance levels of these institutions were analyzed by means of statistical methodologies (multiple regression analysis). Outcome indicators were considered.

The findings indicate the need to go further “measurement,” and to take care of performance “management,” especially in complex organizations as universities, where academicians identify themselves more with their professions than with the organization and where technicians and administrative employees might look at the performance-based reform with “bureaucratic eyes.” A fruitful cooperation between the professional soul and the bureaucratic one is paramount.

Studies which analyze organizational factors that could affect the adoption and implementation of performance management systems are rare, and use in prevalence qualitative methods or refer to machine bureaucracies, not many to professional ones as public universities. Moreover, the performance management literature in a public university context deepens the topic of the selection of KPIs and the focus is mainly on macro performance or on management tools for gathering and analyzing performance measures.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the construct of online public engagement by identifying the modalities universities use to give visibility to their approach on institutional websites.

An exploratory factor analysis outlined the principle dimensions that explain online public engagement starting from the analysis of a sample of American and English universities. To finish, a t-test shows the differences in the approaches to online public engagement in the sample universities.

The results of this analysis show that the construct of public engagement used for online communication has been investigated through three dimensions and that the American and English universities have different approaches in its declination.

The analysis was conducted on a sample of American and English universities; however the study underlines the fact that the traditional approaches to public engagement can assume different connotations for online communication.

Coherent organization of the online communication of public engagement activities can reinforce the perception of the university in the eyes of both internal and external stakeholders. For this reason, research offers interesting input for evaluating which kind of strategy should be adopted for online public engagement in line with the desired positioning and as defined by the governing bodies of the university institutions. However, the universities still need to institutionalize public engagement.

This work constitutes the first attempt to investigate public engagement in the university context through the web, using quantitative methodologies in order to highlight the different strategic orientations and operative declinations.

The purpose of this paper is to extend existing research on stakeholder orientation (SO) on higher education institutions (HEIs) by segmenting Spanish public universities based on their perceived levels of SO and describing the profiles of the different segments identified. Given that being stakeholder-oriented, as well as being market-oriented, is a matter of degree and not an absolute condition, the authors expect to find heterogeneity among public universities in terms of their levels of SO.

The authors designed a mail survey that was e-mailed to all managers of Spanish public universities, resulting in 795 usable questionnaires. A latent segmentation methodology was used to define the segmentation and profiling of the individuals.

Through latent class segmentation analysis, two clusters were identified: high stakeholder-oriented universities (HSOs) and low stakeholder-oriented universities (LSOs). Interestingly, HSOs universities perceive themselves to have greater organisational complexity and a lower level of reputation than LSOs, but that they are more active in terms of resource acquisition. LSOs universities are larger than HSOs and have a superior ranking.

This study will help university managers by providing useful information that will enable them to be more sensitive to the wants and needs of their stakeholders. It will also assist policy-makers who wish to support strategic decisions to promote differentiation among public universities, avoiding the mimetic effect.

Latent class segmentation can be a very useful technique to segment public universities based on their SO. Wherever heterogeneity exists, the latent class analysis will facilitate identification of the clusters of public universities and the profile of these different clusters according to their level of SO (either responsive or proactive).

There is currently limited knowledge of the strategic organizational routines such as strategic planning and benchmarking of universities in the Western Balkans (WB). Thus the purpose of this paper is to map perceptions and concerns of institutional leadership about these routines within the public and private universities in the region.

An online survey targeting all public and private universities in the WB was sent to the rector's and president's office. The survey data were analyzed with descriptive statistical methods, calculating frequencies, and means.

Data revealed that the majority of both public and private universities have implemented strategic planning. Analysis of strategic planning between private and public universities indicated that averages scores were slightly higher in the private rather than the public universities. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats analysis was among the statements that received higher scores (perceptions about implementation) from both types of universities. The relatively low scores from both types of institutions concerning perceived implementation and importance of benchmarking might imply that WB universities achieve their goals in a less competitive environment.

The significance of the paper lies in the fact that no existing studies have investigated strategic planning and benchmarking in the WB universities. To be able to build a potential baseline for further research, including the possibility for more comparative research both within and beyond the region, the selection of routines was taken from the US Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for Performance Excellence in Education. This study contributes to the body of research for literature about strategic organizational routines and strategy-as-practice.

The aim of this study is to build upon Jain et al.'s (2007) work by investigating the knowledge-sharing barriers and strategies of academic staff in public and private universities in Malaysia which have received relatively little research attention to date.

A survey of 502 questionnaires was collected on both public and private universities in Malaysia. Data were analysed using SPSS.

The overall findings show that private universities are more effective and are more willing to share knowledge. Linking knowledge sharing with non-monetary rewards and fair performance appraisals are strongly recommended in private universities, while monetary rewards, recognitions, publication of knowledge on websites and newsletters and the use of appropriate technology tools and systems are strongly recommended in public universities.

Top management in Malaysian public and private universities must play their role and put in more effort to ensure academics have the proper platform and support to share their knowledge.

This study is perhaps one of the first to address the comparison between knowledge sharing among lecturers in private and public universities in Malaysia.