Characterizing the heterogeneity of European higher education institutions combining cluster and efficiency analyses

The heterogeneity of the Higher Education (HE) Institutions is one of the main critical issues to address properly the assessment of systemic performance. We adopt a multi-level perspective by combining national (macro) and institution (micro) level data and analyses. We combine clustering and efficiency analysis to characterize the heterogeneity of HE systems (at the national level) exploiting micro level data. We show also the potential of using micro level data to characterize national level performance. The obtained results may provide a quantitative support to identify the higher education institutions that need to be further investigated through qualitative case studies in political science analyses of HE systems.