The Spanish Public University: A justified proposal to enhance its contribution to economic growth and positioning in international rankings

Abstract

With the new millennium a legislative change in the Spanish University occured. The LOU (2001 and its modification in 2007) repealed the LRU and, thus the organization, objectives and instrumentalization in higher education.

The role of the University must promote technological progress and human and economic growth. However, any academic demand for results in teaching and research mechanism had been practically circumvented until the entry into force of the LOU, since there were no procedures of intrinsic and comparative measurement of each of them. For some years now, the individual and comparative information has made it possible to evaluate the progress and objectives achieved by each University.

From a strategic point of view and making use of institutional information, mainly the economic one, a quantitative analysis is carried out with panel data (2010-2017). Economic growth and budgetary items of the Spanish public university system are listed below to determine which variables would be more suitable to achieve greater efficiency both in national economic objectives and in international comparative academic improvement, measured with the existing rankings.

In order to achieve these objectives by means of this methodology, three hypotheses are put forward referring to the relationship between the University and economic growth and the identification of strategic variables to promote it, as well as an improvement in the positioning in the international rankings.

Therefore, this study aims to provide the institutional policymakers with instruments to boost support for public higher education institutions and achieve greater efficiency and results in the socio-economic environment and in the international positioning of Spanish public universities.

            Keywords: public university, staff costs, master's degree, economic growth, rankings, panel data models.