Transparency and Accountability in Higher Education as a Response to External Stakeholders and Rules: a Comparison between three Country-case studies

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have been increasingly under pressure to enhance
accountability towards their stakeholders and to disclose relevant, updated, and reliable
information about their performance in terms of teaching/education, research and other
activities, often labeled ‘third mission’.
Based on an exploratory qualitative research, build through the analysis of literature, of
national legislation, and of the information disclosed in different institutional websites, the
purpose of this chapter is to offer a general overview of the present accountability
requirements and of the instruments or resolutions, rule-driven but also voluntary, adopted in
three European countries used as country-case studies – the Netherlands, Portugal, and Italy –.
In addition, this contribution aims at proposing a general assessment of the degree of
transparency and accountability of public-funded HEIs.
Findings indicate that there is a quite a strong emphasis on accountability towards public or
private funders/sponsors and to actual and future students and their families. It has also been
realized that the weakest area in terms of transparency of HEIs’ performance is that of transfer
and consulting activities, contrasting to the attention paid to the disclosure of teaching and
education performance information. Overall, HEIs in the three countries seem to be
transparent but especially towards expert stakeholders who know exactly what to look for and
where, since performance information is often scattered and available on wide documents,
making the access and usability of information relatively low.
The current research aims at contributing to the literature on transparency and accountability,
particularly on performance information disclosure in the specific environment of public-
funded higher education institutions, from an international comparative perspective, while
offering to managers and policymakers some hints on how to assess their current transparency
practices, as well as some suggestions about possible future amendments and improvements.
Clearly, additional investigation is needed to further validate some findings and introduce
other transparency dimensions and national contexts.