The Use of Funding to Encourage Quality in Academic Programmes: some lessons from experience, and their applicability

Abstract

This article explores the proposition that, as it has typically been used, performance‐based funding has limitations which may not encourage the fullest development of the quality of academic programmes. Beginning with a discussion of the relationship between accountability and improvement, the article then moves on to consider different approaches to special‐purpose funding and some implications for the enhancement of academic programmes. A number of lessons are drawn from a range of experiences in the use of special‐purpose funding in its various forms, and the article concludes with some comments on their applicability (in most countries) at a time of constraints on funding.