Participations to European Framework Programs of higher education institutions and their association with organizational characteristics

This paper aims to analyze patterns of participation of higher education institutions (HEIs) to European Framework Programs (EU-FP) and their association with HEI characteristics, country and geographical effects. We have analyzed a sample of 2235 HEIs in 30 countries in Europe, derived from the European Tertiary Education Register (ETER), which has been matched with data on participations in EU-FPs in 2011 using the EUPRO database. Our findings identified (1) a high concentration of EU-FP participation in a small group of HEIs with high reputation; (2) the participation of non-doctorate awarding HEIs in EU-FPs is very limited despite the fact that they account for a significant share of tertiary student enrolments; (3) the number of participations tends to increase proportionally to organizational size, and is strongly influenced by international reputation; (5) there is limited evidence of significant country effects in EU-FP participations, as well as of the impact of distance from Brussels. We interpret these results as an outcome of the close association between HEI reputation and the network structure of EU-FP participants