Emerging evaluation in higher education institutions as steering instrument : implementation and expectations

The Italian higher education system has been reformed deeply during the last years according to a double decade span of new innovations that have shaped an old “Humboldtian” system dominated by loosely coupling organizations, into a new public management inspired asset that is pushing toward an entrepreneurial kind of higher education institutions (HEIs). This long run toward a more financially sustainable, efficient and virtuous system has been characterized by a changing role of Universities (from an universalistic perspective to a more entrepreneurial role), and at the same time by the introduction of new instruments that have been reckoned ideal in order to push the overall changing. The so called “third mission” (Laredo 2007) entered so forth the political rhetoric and, step by step, was to some extent codified into the single Statutes and practices led by universities. Among these innovations regarding both the micro, meso and macro levels within the organisations, the evaluation procedures have been thought as one of the most overwhelmingly present. Evaluation is, without running the risk to simplify too much, one of the key policy instrument that has been invested to guide the accountability path and to let the policy makers to steer the university system toward self-responsible rationales (Whitley et al, 2007; Ferlie et al, 2009)