QUALITATIVE COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS FOR EU HIGHER EDUCATION AUTONOMY

Abstract

A question about the connection and configuration of different conditions are such as organizational leadership, human resources management, academic autonomy, and financial autonomy related to the university autonomy outcome in the higher education institutions. The article objective is to clarify the causal effect of these conditions and university autonomy outcome in EU universities. The qualitative comparative method with logical configuration was used to work with 23 EU university systems. It is found that the academic freedom does not greatly affect the comparison of university autonomy in Europe, because EU countries take academic autonomy for granted obviously at universities without creating certain conditions. The findings indicated the important relationship of a combination between organizational leadership and human resources management ORG [1] * HRM [1] or on different path, a combination of human resources management and financial autonomy HRM [1]* FIN [1]. It is interesting that the findings shows there is no symmetry of outcome for negative university autonomy, it can configurate from a combination of weak leadership and organizational and weak financial autonomy condition.

Keywords; university autonomy, higher education, QCA methods