Empowering’ university policies improve our economies, states the recent report of Empower European Universities called The State of University Policy for progress in Europe. This report assesses the contribution of higher education policies to higher education performance and economic innovation. The main findings are summarized in a policy report, the technical report explains the data we have used and method, the country reports provide a snapshot of each one of the 32 countries.

Higher education contributes to economic innovation. This study measures and compares the extent to which national governments’ policies foster this contribution across Europe. The study stresses the relevance of policies which are ‘empowering’ for higher education institutions, or in other words provide them with appropriate resources and regulatory environments.The assessment relies on quantitative scores, based on the contribution of policies regarding funding and autonomy to higher education performance in education, research and economic innovation, using non-arbitrary weights and eighteen policy indicators across 32 European countries. A large number of countries belong to a ‘middle group’ in our overall assessment, indicating a relative cohesion in Europe. Yet, substantial variations exist in terms of higher education policy in Europe, each European country having room for policy improvement.