Top ranked universities’ models of funding and forms of governance.

One ambition of higher education policy has been to promote democracy. Public investments in higher education has aimed to encourage admission of students regardless of background. While higher education has become a mass phenomenon that lacks social exclusivity, a number of elite universities have maintained a preeminent position. In the last decades, this position has been confirmed by the spread of international ranking lists. Many of the elite universities on these lists rely to a large degree on private funding while in for example the Nordic countries they are mainly publicly funded. With a focus on Europe and the USA, the project aims to investigate the connections between top ranked universities’ models of funding, forms of governance and academic performance. Forms of government refers to who wields the ultimate power to appoint the university board, for example alumni, the collegium, or the government. An ambition is to find patterns in how forms of governance and funding models interact in creating high quality education and research, and in driving costs.

Janne Holmén is Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor at the Department of Education.