4. Dezember 2025, 16 Uhr (via MS Teams-Livestream)

Jürgen Janger, Ökonom am WIFO, dem Österreichischen Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung

Titel: Just following the money? How research funding shapes the governance of university research

Anmeldungen per Mail an verena.herbsthofer@wu.ac.at

Livestream: via MS Teams

Abstract:

Two main reforms have taken place in many European university systems: first, universities have supposedly become autonomous strategic actors. Second, research funding has changed to a complex mix of often performance-based block grants and competitive project-based grants. However, literature so far has barely investigated how different research funding characteristics affect universities’ capacity to act strategically. We build a novel conceptual framework to argue that funding arrangements impact university leadership’s strategic space to steer research along three dimensions: the locus of the governance of research activities, how strategies are implemented, and which directions research takes. We investigate this in a comparative analysis of how research is governed at universities in Sweden and Austria, providing a systematic account of the effects of varying characteristics of research funding on strategically steering research at universities. Our results inform the discussion on whether and how financing can be used to govern university research.

About the speaker:

Jürgen Janger is an economist at WIFO, the Austrian institute of economic research, where he has also been research group coordinator and deputy director for research in rotating, temporary management roles. His main research interests are science and innovation policy. A main research focus has been on the determinants of university research performance, attractive jobs and careers in academia, which he has investigated in many studies and research projects. He was a member of the Steering Committee of the large scale FP7 project WWWforEurope, coordinating research area 3 on innovation and science, which looked inter alia at the competitiveness of European science. He has also investigated research funding models, comparing the design of project-based funding across several large funders of basic research. Recently, he was an expert for the mutual learning exercise on research careers, responsible for the thematic report 3 on a balanced circulation of researchers.

17. September 2025, 15 Uhr (in Präsenz und via MS Teams-Livestream)

Prof. Gary Rhoades, Professor of Higher Education at the University of Arizona’s Center for the Study of Higher Education

Titel: Universities' pursuit of increased productivity: To what purposes, in whose interests, and at what costs?

Anmeldungen per Mail an verena.herbsthofer@wu.ac.at

Livestream: via MS Teams

Abstract:

So much of the pattern in higher education internationally has been the increased emphasis by government and university policymakers to manage postsecondary/tertiary organizations and their academic workforces for increased productivity. That has been characterized over the decades in many ways by various comparative higher education scholars. But the trendline is clear and widespread, including in the European context, for example, recently in the introduction of tenure tracks for academic employees. The overall trendline throughout the world often in some way invokes some vision and version of developments in the U.S., with their own particular and distinctive versions of seeking to enhance university productivity. Yet, to what larger purposes, in whose particular interests, and at what costs are such efforts and policy initiatives undertaken? Drawing on examples from the U.S. as well as from other national contexts, from Europe and Latin America, I explore these questions in relation to how the pursuit of productivity plays out for nations, for higher education organizations, and for the academic workforce. The latter is important because at the center of efforts to counter such developments, calling for a higher education’s greater attention to its fundamental social missions are the academic employees who are being increasingly managed by national policy and university practices to achieve increased productivity according to particular, generally quantitative metrics. 

Biosketch:

Gary Rhoades is Professor of Higher Education at the University of Arizona’s Center for the Study of Higher Education, of which he was Director for 19 years. Rhoades’ scholarship focuses on the restructuring of academic institutions and of academic labor, as in his books, Managed professionals: Unionized faculty and restructuring academic labor (SUNY Press, 1998), Academic capitalism and the new economy: Markets, state, and higher education (co-authored with first author Sheila Slaughter) (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), and Organizing professionals: Academic employees negotiating a new academy (Rutgers University Press, 2025). From his years as a postdoctoral scholar in Burton R. Clark’s Comparative Higher Education Research Group at UCLA, Rhoades has throughout his career researched and contributed to the comparative higher education literature, often with international colleagues, including, among others, Simon Marginson, Barbara Sporn, Bjorn Stensaker, and Jussi Valimma.

4. Juni 2025, 15:00 CET

John Aubrey Douglass, Senior Research Fellow - Public Policy and Higher Education at the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE)

Vortragstitel: US and Global Higher Education in the Trump Era

Die Kurzbio und weiterführende Informationen finden Sie hier.

Registration: verena.herbsthofer@wu.ac.at

Livestream: via MS Teams

3. März 2025, 15:00 CET

Prof. Dr. Frank Ziegele, Geschäftsführer, CHE Centrum für Hochschulentwicklung

Vortragstitel: Dissolving Certainties and Emerging Identities: The Role of Science Management in Shaping the ‘Authentic University’

Die Kurzbio und weiterführende Informationen finden Sie hier.

Registration: verena.herbsthofer@wu.ac.at

Livestream: via MS Teams

21. November 2024, 16 Uhr

Pedro N. Teixeira, Professor in Economics at the Faculty of Economics (University of Porto)

Titel: This time is different? The impact of AI on graduate employment and its implications for higher education

Anmeldungen per Mail an verena.herbsthofer@wu.ac.at

Livestream: via MS Teams

20. März 2023, 16 Uhr

Cláudia S. Sarrico, policy analyst at the OECD Science, Technology, and Innovation Directorate

Titel: Beyond the Ivory Tower: Navigating Diverse Career Paths for Emerging Research and Innovation Talent

Ein Abstract und eine Kurzbio finden Sie hier.

Anmeldungen per Mail an verena.herbsthofer@wu.ac.at

Livestream: via MS Teams

22. November 2023, 16 Uhr

Prof. Dr. Liviu Matei, Professor of Higher Education and Public Policy, Head of the King's School of Education, Communication & Society (ECS)

Titel: Academic freedom and institutional autonomy in Europe: diverging paths? 

Abstract und Kurzbio finden Sie hier.

Anmeldungen per Mail an verena.herbsthofer@wu.ac.at

Livestream: via MS Teams

10. November 2022, 11 Uhr

Prof. Piet Naudé, Professor of Ethics and the immediate past Director of the University of Stellenbosch Business School

Vortragstitel: The future of management education: radical shifts, societal expectations, and the role of businesses

Die Kurzbio und weiterführende Informationen finden Sie hier.

Anmeldungen per Mail an verena.herbsthofer@wu.ac.at

Livestream: via MS Teams

18. Oktober 2022, 16 Uhr

Prof. Dr. Marijk van der Wende, Distinguished Faculty Professor of Higher Education an der Fakultät für Law, Economics and Governance der Universität Utrecht

Vortragstitel: Openness challenged university at risk? 

Die Kurzbio und weiterführende Informationen finden Sie hier.

Anmeldungen per Mail an verena.herbsthofer@wu.ac.at

Livestream: via MS Teams

24. Juni 2022

Prof. Dr. Francisco O. Ramirez, Professor of Education and (by courtesy) Sociology at Stanford University

Vortragstitel: Universities: From Historical Institutions to Organizational Actors?

Die Kurzbio von Prof. Ramirez finden Sie hier.

Anmeldung: verena.herbsthofer@wu.ac.at

3. Mai 2022

Prof. Bjørn Stensaker, Vizerektor für Lehre, Universität Oslo

Vortragstitel: Strategic university alliances - potential implications for competition and cooperation in the global higher education landscape

Eine Kurzbio von Prof. Stensaker finden Sie hier.

Anmeldung: verena.herbsthofer@wu.ac.at

24. März 2022

Prof. Dr. Tatiana Fumasoli, Leiterin des Centre for Higher Education Studies CHES, UCL Institute of Education, University College London, London (UK)

Vortragstitel: The globally engaged university: organisational capacity and strategic positioning at times of Covid 19

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23. November 2021 - via MS Teams

Prof. Dr. Georg Krücken, ICHER-Kassel International Centre for Higher Education Research Kassel

Vortragstitel: Multipler Wettbewerb im Hochschulsystem – Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven und wissenschaftspolitische Implikationen

Eine Kurzbiographie von Prof. Krücken und ein Abstract zum Vortrag finden Sie hier.

Anmeldung: verena.herbsthofer@wu.ac.at

20. Oktober 2021

Prof. Dr. Marijk van der Wende, Distinguished Faculty Professor of Higher Education an der Fakultät für Law, Economics and Governance der Universität Utrecht

Vortragstitel: Facing global change: Eurasian relations in higher education

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verena.herbsthofer@wu.ac.at

Livestream: via Youtube