Universities that did not win excellence funding may have been neglected by policymakers, new paper suggests
Photo credits: Mikael Kristensen / Unsplash
Controversial funding schemes that funnel extra money into “excellent” universities in France and Germany to boost their ranking positions seem to have paid off in terms of the volume of researchers papers produced, a new study has found.
But this extra research wasn’t more highly cited than normal, and there are concerns that these so-called excellence initiatives may have caused governments to ignore wider reforms that would have boosted all universities, not just a winning elite.
The analysis found that each €1 million in additional funding the winning universities produced an extra 22.5 research articles.
“This is a very rough estimate,” stressed Nicolas Carayol, an economist at the University of Bordeaux and one of the paper's authors. But this return on investment is “comparable” with other studies that look at the price per paper, he added.
France and Germany’s excellence initiatives have their origins in the 2000s, when Paris…
Discover the latest in research funding every Tuesday with Funding Newswire. Dive into detailed articles with our monthly or yearly subscriptions or start with a free trial
NOTE: if you're a part of one of our Network member organisations, you get free access by signing up with your institutional email. Verify your eligibility here.
Receive the Funding Newswire [full access requires a subscription] each Tuesday, our Policy Bulletin each Thursday, and news about bridging Europe’s east-west innovation gap twice a month in The Widening. 
A unique international forum for public research organisations and companies to connect their external engagement with strategic interests around their R&D system.