WHICH ROLE FOR PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT SYSTEMS IN HIGHER EDUCATION? FOCUS ON QUALITY ASSURANCE IN ITALY

This article explores the role of voluntary quality assessments in higher education, underscoring their main features and potentialities, and showing that basic principles and guidelines can be customised in different countries or single institutions. The article extensively presents an assessment project developed at the University of Siena, the first integrated assessment of teaching and research quality of a whole university carried out in Italy. The article clearly highlights the relevance of quality assurance and performance measurement systems and the behavioural and organisational impacts they may have.