Using data from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, this paper compares the earnings premium and employment share of jobs in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) across 11 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The results reveal that the STEM wage premium…

New public management (NPM) has dominated the reforms in the higher education sector and the academic discussion on how universities should be governed since the 1980s. Besides, the introduction of accountability and efficiency measures in the form of performance measurement and pay-for-performance scheme, a key debated aspect of NPM is the…

Universities and other higher education institutions in Europe offer a vast and increasing number of academic degree programs in the broad field of Public Administration. A subset of these programs is those offering postgraduate degrees to experienced students being already employed by public or private organisations. These executive programs are…

In recent times, a growing consensus has emerged, among researchers and policy-makers, that a well-educated, competent and adequately supported workforce is crucial for the quality of early childhood education and care (ECEC). Despite governmental initiatives aimed to enhance the professional preparation and continuing development of early years…

The objective of this paper is an efficiency analysis concerning higher education systems in European countries. Data have been extracted from OECD data-sets (Education at a Glance, several years), using a non-parametric technique--data envelopment analysis--to calculate efficiency scores. This paper represents the first attempt to conduct such an…

When the global financial crisis hit in 2008, it looked at first as if many European universities were going to escape the worst. Higher education has long been considered a public right and a taxpayer-financed obligation, and there was optimism that universities, which government leaders hail as drivers of economic growth, would emerge relatively…

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the nature of bureaucratization within public research bodies and its relationship to scientific performance, focusing on an Italian case-study. The main finding is that the bureaucratization of the research sector has two dimensions: public research labs have academic bureaucratization since researchers…

In recent years, various reforms have sought to foster forms of marketisation in the Italian public sector, promoting the uptake of concepts such as customer satisfaction and perceived quality. In the field of higher education, such efforts have focused on certain specific areas, like quality of research and teaching, while the quality of…

There are broad concerns in Italy about public sector efficiency. Within the public sector higher education (HE) has a major role, providing the economy with research outputs and graduates. Italian universities claim to have expanded teaching and research services to keep pace with the growth of the "knowledge society." An important…