The objective of the project has been to identify the most important aspects of contemporary university life in changing times and to find ways of benchmarking them. It assumes excellence and value adding are goals sought by all universities. The sixty-seven benchmarks included here may still be thought too many for regular use in all universities. Chapter 12 addresses the difficulties and possibilities of using a smaller core sub-set. Why benchmark No single university, however large, can encompass all knowledge.
Every university has to make choices.
It is demanding to be world class in even a few academic fields. Each university has to prioritise the use of its resources and use them to best effect. Knowing whether it is succeeding in its aims is another more demanding level of difficulty. The key consequential question is how university leaders will know where their institutions stand and how they can be improved. 1.3 Why universities are different.