Talk of making?efficiencies in higher education is using ¡°a frame of thinking which is not fit for this sector¡±, a conference has heard, with sector leaders urging universities to find new ways of measuring outputs that better show their worth to societies.

Speaking at a London conference hosted by UNICA, a network of European capital city universities, King¡¯s College London professor Liviu Matei?said:?¡°There¡¯s a lot of talk about efficiency in higher education. This vocabulary comes mainly from policymakers.¡±

¡°There is very little research on efficiency,¡± he added. ¡°The research that exists is all microeconomics, and it doesn¡¯t work, because of the ratio of output to investment ¨C what is the output for research? Is it the number of citations? Is it the number of articles?¡±

¡°Higher education is not a product,¡± said Matei, also head of the King¡¯s School of Education, Communication and Society. ¡°This is one area where research is underdeveloped. We don¡¯t have something else to propose instead of microeconomics, which doesn¡¯t work for the case of efficiency in higher education.¡±

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Ha Wei, vice-dean at Peking University¡¯s School of Education, Beijing, said measuring output ¡°is going to be the fundamental dilemma within higher education¡±, noting that at his university, faculty submit metrics at the end of each year including their teaching hours, credit units taught, journal articles published and impact generated. ¡°At the same time, not everything can be counted that can be funded, and not everything that can be funded can be counted.¡±

Addressing public perception of output, he noted that a 2024 Economist article claiming that universities fail to drive economic growth has been used to ¡°criticise the Chinese higher education system¡±, adding, ¡°That¡¯s not entirely true, but that¡¯s the impression we have to deal with.¡±

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Marcelo Knobel, executive director of The World Academy of Sciences and former rector of the University of Campinas, S?o Paulo, said universities are ¡°failing at the public communication of the importance of higher education¡±, describing common output metrics as ¡°more for [the sector¡¯s] internal consumption¡±.

¡°If we don¡¯t show to society as a whole that universities are a fundamental pillar for the well-being of society, we are failing,¡± he said. ¡°We should try as much as possible to make an effective communication to society about the importance of universities ¨C not only [through] the quality indicators that we are able to produce and to study, but in terms of language, and in terms of reaching younger generations.¡±

As we are living in a fake news world, the facts don¡¯t matter very much. It¡¯s the message, the narrative, that is the important thing,¡± Knobel said. ¡°We have to win the narrative battle.¡±

emily.dixon@timeshighereducation.com