1. The Finances of World-Class Universities 2006-2016
Alex Usher
CGHE
LONDON, UK 13 September 2018

2. Four Questions:
What is the comparative financial position of world-class universities around the world?
Are World-Class Universities doing better than they were ten years ago?
Are World-Class Universities being treated differently from the rest of the higher education system?
What effects have funding changes had on scientific output at World-Class Universities?

3. Definitions and caveats
WCUs = ARWU top-200 universities.
Why expenditures? Smoother than income.
Why per-student? Data more easily accessible
Caveat 1: Methods of counting students differ across countries.
Mainly affects anglophone countries. UK/Australia look high.
Caveat 2: Boundaries of university expenditures differs.
E.g. hospitals, businesses, residences, sports teams, etc.
Caveat 3: Definition of expenditures differs (a bit).
Caveat 4: Year ends differ

4. The Data
174 ARWU-200 institutions provide data on both finances and student numbers for either 2015 or 2016.
(missing: Saudi Arabia, France, South Korea, Russia, some Chinese and Belgian Universities, various others)
166 institutions have data going back to 2006 (missing: rest of China)
Data is taken either from national sources (US, Canada, UK, Australia, Switzerland) or institutional yearbooks (elsewhere)

5. World-Class Universities, $/student 2015 -16

6. Six Categories of Institutions
Category
Size (USD)
Institutions
Super-rich/super-specialized (7)
$500K plus
UCSF, Icahn, CalTech, Rockefeller
Rich (35)
$ K
Most US Privates, UMich, UVa, Cambridge, Tokyo
Well-off (38)
$50-100K
Most US Publics, Most major Asian unis
Middle-class (35)
$35-50K
UBC, ANU, TU Munich
Stretched (39)
$20-35K
Mostly European Us, Toronto, Melbourne, Technion
Over-stretched (16)
Sub-$20K
Nearly all European

7. Avg $/student among ARWU-200 institutions, by country

8. World-Class Universities, $/student 2015-16

9. 2015-2016 real per-student expenditures at world-class universities, (2006=100)

10. Change in real per-student expenditures at world-class universities, by country, 2006-16

11. UK Universities

12. US Private Universities

13. US Public Universities

14. Swedish Universities

15. Japanese Universities

16. Canada

17. Australian Universities

18. German Universities

19. Swiss Universities

20. Dutch universities

21. Measuring Effect of Increased Funding on Publication Output
Output measured simply by publications. Comparing Leiden- indexed publications to
Large increase in number of indexed publications (44% across all ARWU-200 institutions;
15.7% increase in per-student funding across all ARWU-200 institutions between
Question: do above-average funding increases lead to above- average increases in scientific output

22. No Short-Term Relation Between $ and Output

23. No Short-term relationship between $ and Impact, either

24. Caveat: China Obvious missing piece is China
Both expenditures and publications rose very quickly in early years of century.
Unfortunately detailed institutional data is not available before (introduction of law on budget transparency)

25. China since 2013

26. Take-aways
WCUs are diverse in their funding levels. Top 50 dominated by institutions with USD $50,000 and more, but below that much more diversity
Per-student expenditures of WCUs are generally rising: 15.7% in real terms over last decade
WCUs expenditures usually increasing faster than non-WCUs, but gap not that large except in Germany and Switzerland
No observable relationship in short-term between per-student spending and relative scientific output.