William Addessi, Bianca Biagi, Laura Ciucci, Claudio Detotto (p), Manuela Pulina

Ricard Esparza Masana

This paper investigates the relationship between graduates, higher education institutions (HEIs), and Social Planners (SPs), examining their objectives and impact on HEIs' attractiveness and graduate retention. A theoretical framework is introduced, with a similarity index to gauge alignment between educational offerings and the local economy. Findings show that HEIs in disadvantaged regions often provide educational portfolios that are not optimally aligned with the local context. Analyzing 75 Italian universities, empirical evidence confirms that proximity between educational offerings and the local job market influences university attractiveness, student quality, and graduate retention. The research underscores the misalignment between HEIs and SPs' objectives.

Júlia Szőke (p), Lívia Ablonczy-Mihályka (p)

Claudio Detotto

Széchenyi István University is located in Győr (Hungary), in the North-West part of the country. Széchenyi István University aims to contribute to the development of the region through high quality education, research focused on state-of-the-art technologies, sustainability and close relations with companies, social and civil organisations. In order to promote this, the institution has over the past year created a management model that enables it to compete in the domestic and international higher education space, therefore the institution is a major player not only in research and development in Hungary but it also enhances the knowledge of social and economic actors in the region through state-of-the-art services. This paper puts the examination in context by focusing on university-industry-government-civil society relations, then it describes the present situation highlighting best practices regarding the cooperation with economic and social actors in the region. Finally, we present the features of the Science and Innovation Park established recently where the arrival of domestic and international companies represents a huge opportunity for both the university and the city Győr that will not only help to raise the quality of the institution's training programmes and its academic performance, but also to trigger new developments in the city. The findings of this paper prove that the role of the university has been changed, the institution has a tremendous responsibility and equally significant opportunity in the development of the region.

Laura Ciucci (p), Ivan Etzo, Stefano Usai

Júlia Szőke

Recognized as key drivers of regional economic development and innovation performance, universities operate through two primary channels: the generation of highly qualified human capital and the creation and dissemination of knowledge. This paper aims to enhance our comprehension of universities' regional influence from a relatively unexplored perspective: the impact of university activities on regional total factor productivity (TFP). To this end, the paper builds on the groundwork laid by Marrocu et al. (2021), which established a framework for measuring universities' effects on TFP across European regions. This ongoing research endeavour seeks to expand upon the initial study by placing significant emphasis on the knowledge generation and transfer initiatives undertaken by universities. Additionally, the project aims to investigate the incremental impacts of specific university characteristics, such as quality, research intensity and collaboration with industrial partners.
The study assesses the impact of universities on total factor productivity across 220 European NUTS 2 regions from 2000 to 2019. We use data from the JRC EU Commission's Knowledge4Policy (K4P) platform to compute the indicator of regional TFP. Our main variable of interest is the number of university patents at regional level. We retrieve this information from OECD, REGPAT database, August 2023. Data from the RISIS-ETER database are used to identify some university characteristics, such as scientific publication, participation in EU-FP projects (notably those in collaboration with industrial partners), proportion of third-party funding, as well as the share of STEM graduates (Lepori et al., 2015).
Preliminary results tend to suggest that higher number of university patents are associated with a significant increase in the regional TFP. Interestingly, this impact appears to be greater for regions where second tier universities are located. This conclusion is in line with previous studies from Atta-Owusu et al. (2021) and Barra et al. (2020). Some policy implications are proposed.

Francesco Prota (p)

Laura Ciucci

This paper provides novel empirical evidence on the effectiveness of policy measures aimed at supporting higher education institutions and early career performance of academic researchers. It investigates a program implemented in Italy which put out a call for financial resources intended for research plans developed by universities, based in Italian regions that are lagging behind in development or in transition. These research plans had to provide for the contractualization (for 36 months) of fixed-term researchers. The action included two lines of intervention: (i) Line 1 (mobility of researchers) supported the contractualization of researchers who had held the PhD title for no more than four years and provided that the new researcher had the obligation to carry out a compulsory period of work from 6 to 15 months at one or more foreign universities/research institutions, participating in technical-scientific research projects/programs; (ii) Line 2 (attraction of researchers) supported the contractualization of researchers who have held the title of research doctor for no more than eight years, active at universities, research institutions or companies operating outside the Italian regions that are lagging behind in development or in transition. Using a counterfactual approach, the empirical analysis shows whether the performance in terms of scientific productivity and career development of the beneficiaries of the policy is better than that of fixed-term researchers recruited through other channels.

Ricard Esparza Masana (p), Jayne Woolford

Francesco Prota

The article analyses 3 instruments of the EU aimed at supporting the engagement of higher education institutions (HEIs) with their local and regional ecosystems, especially when developing knowledge and innovation-activities. Through over interviews, focus groups, questionnaires, and surveys to over 100 HEIs (and over 200 representatives) throughout the EU, the study analyses three main programmes aimed at that objective: the European Universities alliances, the Knowledge Alliances (Erasmus+), and the HEI Initiative of the European Institute of Technology and Innovation (EIT). Results are presented under three main domains: (1) implications of the programmes/projects in fostering educational/training development in collaboration between HEIs and other stakeholders in their regions; (2) implications in enlarging the collaboration with regional stakeholders; and (3) implications in identifying key challenges/needs and priority domains for a territory, supporting stakeholders and governments to address those challenges and developing solutions.