Value Creation and Related Measurement in Universities. An Empirical Application

The growing normative, financial, organizational and didactic autonomy, which has interested European universities, has stimulated the monitoring processes on efficiency, efficacy, and operational methods with which public resources are managed. Moreover, the association between financial funds, along with sustained costs and service quality, has strongly increased top management’s attention to costs reduction and, above all, to the final user’s satisfaction. In this new scenario, evaluation comes out to be the natural consequence of the strong universities’ autonomist pressure. Therefore, this paper, after approaching universities’ structural and systemic assets, as well as their relationship with the referring contest, analyses specific (related to the formative offer) and global university’s performances measurement methods and evaluation difficulties. The exposed theoretical analyses are completed with an empirical application about an engineering degree course self-assessment. KEY WORDS: Universities, evaluation, assessment, service quality.