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In this section the investigated universities are contrasted by looking at some key indicators. As can be observed when looking at table 1, the investigated universities are substantially different in almost all aspects. They all have a different disciplinary focus, as well as represent a different type of university. While the UOC and the UPC share similar governmental as well as economic environment conditions, they are still rather different considering the differences caused by the distance education mandate.
Table 4.1 – Cross-Case-Study University Overview
All universities are rather young institutions. But within this category the sample is spread between 112 and 12 years. Furthermore, we have a great variety of size indicators, which follow the disperse structure of the sample. For example, while the LSE is the smallest organisation in student numbers, it is still hiring more professors than the FU. And while the remaining three universities can all be classified as ‘big’, the UOC’s impressive 40 thousand has to be assessed in the context of non-spatial limitations along with a better profit rate for highly popular courses. Unfortunately, the number of professors is not really comparable; the concept of professors is different in the universities’ divergent countries and the UOC actually uses a pedagogical model where no classical professor exists. The same is true for the professor student ratio, which looks even more dispersed than expected. Within the administration we find the expected absolute variation, more or less at a similar rate for the big presidential universities. We also note a comparatively higher rate for the LSE because it cannot take advantage of the economies of scale. The UOC naturally shows a very good student to administration ratio. The budget per student indicator gives (possibly) the most relevant impression of the state of the universities investigated. The LSE has the most resources by far, followed by the two traditional universities, which have a comparable per student rate, and followed at a significant distance by the UOC, which naturally offers a much cheaper education. This pattern is repeated when looking at the IT budget per student, while the LSE and the UPC spent about the same percentage of the overall budget on IT, the money the LSE has available to spend per student is more than double that of the UPC. The UOC is obviously weighting IT spending differently. Here 11% of the overall budget is spent. However, when looking at the spending per student, it is even less than the UPC. Unfortunately, no data could be obtained for the FU in either this nor the next aspect of investigation, because of the nature of the distributed function. Also, the number of IT staff is telling in regards to the approach that the universities have. The LSE is well staffed with almost 40 workers, striking when compared to the 98 workers for UPCnet. A small difference in numbers for an institution that is more than triple the size. This can perhaps be explained by an effective exploitation of the varied divergent economies of scale. By examining the strategic number of IT staff at each university, one can easily observe UOC’s lean management approach described in section 1.3.2
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[1] Figures based from ConStats, 2006, Annual report 2005
[2] Figures from 2006 – except IT budget and staff which were calculated by author from 2007 data
[3] Figures from 2007
[4] 1504 students
[5] Half of the shared clinical professors at the Charite are counted
[6] lecturers
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