Typologie des conceptions des universités en vue d'en évaluer la performance: Rendre compte de la diversité pour en saisir la complexité

Abstract

The university system is complex and is constantly pressured to evaluate its performance. How should university performance be defined? There is no agreement on the dimensions, criteria and indicators to choose. This article presents a typology of the conceptions of universities so as to evaluate their performance. Based on an extensive literature review, a typology prototype consisting of seven conceptions of universities was developed. A method of anasynthesis (Silvern, 1972; Sauvé, 1992; and Legendre, 2005) was used to verify the typology. Semi-structured interviews were held with eleven experts. These experts assessed the proposed typology in relation to six validation criteria (clarity, logic consistency, comprehensiveness, economy, usefulness and acceptability by users). This article presents the results of this research as well as the seven optimal typology categories (public service, market, academic, learner, political, entrepreneurial and living environment).