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University Benchmarking (UBM)

Comparison of key indicators for research and teaching

Universities are to sharpen their profile in research and teaching and increasingly enter into a competitive relationship with other universities for students, research funding and scientific reputation. At the same time, the growing autonomy of universities is accompanied by increased demands on university management and university-related reporting.

Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) also faces these challenges. As a result of close cooperation between university management and faculties, a key figures project was initiated to provide university management as a whole as well as faculties with an information base supported by key figures. This project gains particular value because universities with similar profiles and interests are involved and open themselves up for comparison with MLU. Such an inter-university comparison is at the same time the start of benchmarking aimed at identifying best practices. Unlike rankings, which are primarily concerned with publicity, this method aims to enable targeted analyses of the processes involved in the production of services. For this reason, the project results are not intended for publication, but are used exclusively within the university.

A total of 26 key figures are calculated and reported according to uniform criteria in the areas of research, teaching, equality and internationalization. Benchmarking partners of Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg are Friedrich Schiller University Jena, the University of Potsdam, Ulm University and, from 2020, Bielefeld University.

The German Center for Higher Education and Science Research (DZHW) supports the project, which is carried out by the universities on their own responsibility, in the calculation of key figures, ensures the quality and validity of the data and develops specific evaluation options. The type and scope of the results are adapted to the interests of the various report recipients.

In the course of the continuous project development, qualitative aspects were also taken into account in the comparison of key figures. By linking the results of the graduate and student survey with suitable indicators of the key figure calculation, the study behavior was analyzed (see project "Good Teaching").

With the capacity-related withdrawal of the universities of Jena and Ulm, the project ended after more than a decade in 2022. For the remaining universities, we hope to be able to continue the cooperation in the environment of the equipment, cost and performance comparison (AKL).

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