A NEW METHODOLOGY FOR MEASURING THIRD MISSION ACTIVITIES OF UNIVERSITIES

European universities have traditionally recognised two main missions of the universities: teaching and academic research. Recently, a Third Mission, frequently underdeveloped by universities, has emerged to include in their missions those activities that facilitate their engagement with society and industry. While the first two missions of the universities have been widely studied and frequently measured, Third Mission is yet to be well examined and approaches to its measurement developed. The objective of the project European Indicators and Ranking Methodology for University Third Mission (E3M) coordinated by Universidad Politecnica de Valencia in Spain and involving a total of eight partner institutions from seven different European countries - Dublin Institute of Technology (Ireland), University of Helsinki (Finland), University of Porto (Portugal), University of Leon (Spain), Istituto Superiore Mario Boella (Italy), University of Maribor (Slovenia) and Danube University Krems (Austria) - is to create a ranking methodology for measuring Third Mission activities of universities. This three-year project (2009-2012) is funded by the European Commission under the Lifelong Learning Programme. The measurement of the three missions of the universities has been generally based on indicators. In line with this, the methodology used by the E3M project to evaluate the contributions of universities to society consists, among other activities, of the identification, definition and selection of the best set of indicators that, in a possible future ranking, would be the basis to evaluate the excellence of institutions in this field.