Author:
Carillo Maria Rosaria,Sapio Alessandro,Venittelli Tiziana
Abstract
AbstractWe study the relationship between the quality of research and teaching in the Italian university system, at the study program level. We run a cross-sectional econometric analysis by using a very rich dataset collected by the Italian National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes on the BA and MA-level degrees of all universities in Italy in the academic year 2016/2017. We find that a positive relationship between teaching quality and research performance emerges if we take account of yardstick competition among study programs belonging to the same department. Indeed, previous theoretical results suggest that, despite the individual trade-off between teaching and research faced by individual academics, in multi-unit universities adopting a budget sharing rule based on both research performance and number of students, the negative relation between teaching and research is reduced or even completely counterbalanced. We find a confirmation of this hypothesis by proxying yardstick competition with the number of study programs activated per department. However, the teaching–research relationship is positive and stronger where study programs are relatively few and immediately comparable by the department managers. Such results emerge more strongly in MA-level degrees, where teaching is more aligned with individual research interests.
Publisher
Springer International Publishing
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