With the growing competition in a globalized world, Universities are seen as the key organizations and supporters in the regional and national innovation system. In fact, the prosperity of regional economies and the health of their Colleges and Universities are inescapably related. Universities provide high quality human capital and knowledge and are the main drivers in regional economic and social growth (Porter et al., 2006). Although the Bologna reform aims to make higher education programs more comparable on an international level, higher education institutes differ across regions and nations (Van Vught, 2008). Academic research of the CCSE is dedicated to analyze relevant differences in higher education systems to improve our understanding of this under-researched but very influent sector of society.

The research group aims to better understand the University world and its relationship with the society, providing cross-national comparisons between Higher Education system and Universities. The main focus are governance and financing models: starting from a comparison within the cisalpino regions, the research group aims to compare a centralized system, as the Italian one, with a federal system, such as the German. The ultimate goal is to understand the advantages of each model and which one better adapts in contributing to the improvement of society.

As far as University governance is concerned, several models have been thoroughly studied in the literature. The first author who identified a model was Clark (1983) who recognized three main agents (government, academic oligarchy and market) shaping the so called "Clark's triangle" to govern the system; a second model was presented by Van Vught (1989), who simplified the Clark's model by identifying two extreme cases: the State control model, typical of the continental European tradition, and the State supervising model, typical of the Anglo-Saxon tradition; a third model was elaborated by Braun and Merrien (1999), who recognized three variables (substantial control by the State, procedural control by the State and system of value): the University governance system results from different combination of these variables. The research group aims to analyze in different Countries how Universities are governed and how the endowment shapes the governance structure. We also investigate topics such as how the governance structure foster regional and national growth, or which governance structure better fulfills this goal and special governance issues. Another objective is to investigate whether the increasing role of private and student contribution is changing the governance model.

Traditionally, Higher Education systems have been funded principally by the governments, but the massification of HE was the long-term aspect that induced governments to revise funding policy adopted hitherto. Under the theoretical principles of the New Public Management, privatization, managerialism and performance assessment were considered the pillars of a reform that would modernize Universities (Sporn, 2006). The research group wants to focus on University funding models in different Countries to understand how the government policies are today changing and whether the shifting costs from public to private sources is happening everywhere. We also aim to study how public and private funding differ between Countries in relative terms and overall.

As far as the massification of higher education is concerned, since the 1960s there has been a sharp increase in enrolment and a transformation from an "élite University system" into a "mass University" or "generalized access system" (Trow, 1974). Research issues to be analyzed concern the recent increase of tuition fees and the social exclusion of students from disadvantaged economical background.

All the analysis will first make use of comparable samples in the cisalpino area, set up by collecting data on higher education system and institutes.