Polytechnic Higher Education Institutions in the National Scientific and Technological System: effectiveness and territorialisation of their mission

The research project was developed with the goal of answering the call for a public contest meant to “finance projects dedicated to the development and validation of a set of performance indicators for polytechnic higher education institutions (PHEI) knowledge production, transference and dissemination” (FCT, 2014,p.1), promoted by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P. (FCT), in collaboration with the General Directorate for Higher Education (DGES) and the General Directorate of Education and Science Statistics (DGEEC). Since the Portuguese higher education system has a binary structure, divided in universities and PHEI, the government assumed the need to identify different performance indicators, able to better assess the effect and quality of the activities developed in both subsystems. For the PHEI it was assumed as necessary to identify performance indicators able to assess “(…) the applied research and cultural creation activities and their impact for the region (…)” (FCT, 2014, p. 1). The research work was done in five stages framed by the purpose of identifying and validating performance indicators for knowledge production, transference and dissemination in the PHEI. Methodologically it was based on document analysis, semi-structured interviews and focus groups, the Delphi Technique application and case studies. The work developed led to the proposal of a performance evaluation model for PHEI, which organizes a set of key-performance indicators in five dimensions: i) services provision; ii) scientific and artistic production; iii) collaborative research; iv) knowledge transference; v) and societal impact. The model is a tool compatible and complementary to other self and/or external evaluation exercises of a more qualitative nature and focused in the description and characterisation of practices, processes and/or interactions.