During the last three years, a number of PRIME or PRIME-related projects have been more or less directly concerned with the development of indicators at the level of individual higher education institutions. We shortly present these projects below.

AQUAMETH (Advanced Quantitative Methods for the Evaluation of the Performance of the Public Sector Research; download flyer)
This PRIME project, coordinated by the University of Pisa, aimed to built the first integrated database on higher education institutions accross Europe and to exploit it for comparative analysis for example of efficiency of HEI, of scale and complementary effects, of changes in the funding structure of HEI, etc.

The original database covered six countries (Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Norway and UK) and covered the period 1995-2003; it is being extend to further European countries including France, Hungary, Netherlands). The AQUAMETH approach has been essentially based on the use of secondary sources available at national level, like data from national statistical offices and rector's conferences, as well as from international databases like ISI.
As an extension of this project, the European Commission has financed in 2009 a feasibility study for a data collection system on individual universities in Europe (EUMIDA project).

Bonaccorsi A., Daraio C. (2007), Universities and Strategic Knowledge Creation, Edward Elgar, forthcoming (link).

Changes in University Incomes and their Impact on University-based Research and Innovation CHINC)
The project, “Changes in University Incomes: Their Impact on University-Based Research and Innovation” (CHINC) was commissioned by the Institute for Prospective Technology Studies (IPTS) to explore the following four topics:

• Actual changes in higher education institutions over the last 10 years in a selected number of European countries.
• Institutional funding developments, in both real and relative terms, and particularly the composition of institutions’ research income portfolios.
• Possible consequences of changes in funding institutions’ research activities
• The availability of institutional level data for conducting such analyses.

A consortium of researchers from 11 countries coordianted by NIFU-STEP (Norway) participated in the study, which combined both quantitative and qualitative techniques in an effort to identify systematic and comparable evidence. More specifically, quantitative data was collected for a sample of 117 institutions and interviews were conducted with well-placed individuals in 97 institutions from the same group.

The results from the CHINC study not only shed new light on changes in institutional funding, and their consequences, but also highlight what data can reasonably be collected. In the end, it points the way ahead towards establishing a purposive, European-wide system of key data on higher education institutions.

CHINC project (2006), Changes in University Incomes and their Impact on University-based Research and Innovation, Report to the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, Seville (pdf).

The Observatory of the European University (OEU; download flyer)
This project, coordinated by the Observatoire des Sciences et Techniques in Paris and by the Institute of Prospective Technological Studies in Seville, had the aim of providing universities with adequate tools for the governance of research activities. The final objective is to provide universities with a benchmark for comparisons

with similar universities thanks to the development of a platform of quantitative data at the university-level across Europe. The project was based on a strong bottom-up approach, working directly with the involved universities and getting data from them; it has produced a methdological guide on the strategic management of university, including also detailed guidelines on how unviersity can produces themselves the indicators needed for this exercise.

Observatory of the European University (2006), Strategic Management of University Research Actitivies. Methodological Guide (pdf, 4MB).