How Autonomous Are the EU Universities? UK vs the Netherlands

European higher education systems have experienced important changes recently.

Those changes led to higher autonomy in most cases. And autonomy leads institutions to be less dependent on one single stream of incomes and more able to adapt.

A university is able to better compete in obtaining funds from different sources when more autonomous. Those funds can come from contracts with private companies or donations.

If you are interested in the differences in autonomy between European universities, you should read this article where we take the United Kingdom and the Netherlands as examples.

The three levels of autonomy: academic, financial and organizational

Basic dimensions of autonomy were set out in 2007 by the EU’s Lisbon Declaration:

• Academic autonomy: guidelines for degree supply, methods of teaching, guidelines for areas, scope, aims and methods of research.
• Financial autonomy: acquiring and allocating funding, guidelines for tuition fees.
• Organizational autonomy: setting university structures and statutes, making contracts, electing decision-making bodies and persons.
• Staffing autonomy: responsibility for recruitment, salaries, and promotions.

The competition between the states of Europe for those categories has been evaluated since, with a weighting system. This system gives relative importance of indicators (“capacity to decide the number of students” for example). It is based on a survey conducted by the EU council in 2010 and submitted to the 26 countries during the national rectors’ conferences.

How are the universities organized?

United Kingdom:

Governance in the UK universities has a dual governing structure, which includes an academic senate and a council.

The Council has 25 members. It is an independent entity and nearly always contains academic staff and student representatives. But, there tends to be a majority of independent external members.

It is often responsible for long-term strategic decisions, such as statutes, strategic plans, the election of the rector and vice-rectors and budget allocation.

The Senate takes care of academic issues, such as curricula, degrees and staff promotions, and consists mainly of internal members of the university community. There are mostly professors and several other categories of academic and administrative staff as well as students.

English universities may freely decide on all aspects of organizational autonomy.

It includes the selection, appointment, dismissal, and term of office of the executive head. Also, they are free to appoint external members and create legal entities.

The Netherlands:

Dutch institutions have a dual governing structure too.

The main governing body of the university is the executive board :

• The president is responsible for major strategic decisions and represents the university externally.
• The vice-president, who is often external to the university, is responsible for finances and staffing.
• The rector deals with academic affairs.

The supervisory body can appoint and dismiss the members of the executive board. It also monitors the achievement of strategic goals.

There are no regulations regarding the executive head apart from the need for the formal approval of the proposed candidate by the minister. The same applies to external representatives on the advisory board.

Dutch universities can set up legal entities and determine their internal academic structures without constraints.

Do their funds come from government or industry?

There are different funding available for universities.

• Government funding: public funds. It includes core funding: the general block grant coming from governmental authorities to support the university as a whole (including all activities: teaching, research and third mission). And competitive funding: contracts and grants coming from governmental authorities distributed on a competitive basis.
• Industry: coming from contracts with private companies.
• Non-profit: funding that comes from non-profit organizations, foundations, philanthropic sources, or donations.
• Abroad/EU: funds received from various programs in Europe. It also includes international funds coming from foreign governments or funding agencies outside Europe.

Figure: Shares of total funds by the source of income, averages by country. Extracted from the JRC Report:“European university funding and financial autonomy”.

As you can see, the UK and the Netherlands mainly use the allocation of public funding through block grants. In this framework, universities are generally free to divide and distribute their funding internally according to their needs.

In Europe in general, 60% to 70% of the total university income comes from government allocations. Financial sources from private companies represent about 6%, around 3% comes from non-profit sectors and approximately 2% is from abroad. The remaining 19% belongs to a residual category ‘Other’.

Considering income from government allocations are only going to decrease, due to the economic situation, private companies might be the key to the future. Outsourcing to them and/or partnering with them becomes the smart move for the next generation universities.

How do they hire/fire people?

There are significant differences in recruitment procedures across Europe. It goes from a large degree of independence in the recruitment of staff to formalized procedures that require the approval of an external authority.

In the UK as in the Netherlands, universities are essentially free to recruit their own academic staff. And they both are able to promote academic and administrative staff freely on the basis of merit.

However, some things are different between these two countries. For example, salaries are decided freely by universities in the UK but they are negotiated with other parties in the Netherlands.

Regarding staff promotion or dismissal in the UK, there are no specific regulations governing the dismissal of academic and administrative staff. They should just take into account the pertinent national labor regulations.

The 14 universities in the Netherlands have different obligations for staffing. Eleven of them follow civil servant-type contracts. Three fall under private law and adhere to regular labor regulations. The universities also negotiate separate labor contracts for the sector, which include specific rules for dismissal.

How do they select their student?

In the Netherlands, the system is based on equal access to Bachelor-level education for all students holding a secondary education qualification. Selection criteria have been determined by the government together with the university sector.

Universities have greater freedom to set selection criteria at the Master’s level.

The Dutch system can be problematic: they are not allowed to select students, and it is seen to have a negative impact on quality. Also, it puts a considerable financial strain on institutions not to be able to predict student numbers and plan accordingly.

In the UK, overall numbers for national/EU students are capped. There are no restrictions on non-EU student numbers. And admission criteria are set by the universities.

Universities in the UK can introduce programs at bachelor level, without prior accreditation. While in the Netherlands all new Bachelor and Master’s programs must be submitted to accreditation to be introduced or publicly funded. But, doctoral programs can still be opened freely by institutions.

Universities in the UK are exceptionally autonomous. The UK ranks among the top three countries and is part of the “high” group of higher education systems in all four areas of institutional autonomy.As for the Netherlands, organizational, financial and staffing autonomy are rated as “medium-high”. Academic autonomy is more limited and therefore rated as “medium-low”.

What there is to remember is that financial autonomy is crucial for universities to achieve their strategic aims.

As we said earlier, national governments are still the main source of funding of the selected universities. But, the share of competitive-based government funding increases comes with increasing levels of financial autonomy. The trend goes to complete autonomy. It is now known that universities are more successful when they diversify their funding sources. This means universities could diversify by turning towards outsourcing their equipment, expertise or services.