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The relationship between university performance and performance-based funding models has been a topic of debate for decades. Promoting performance-based funding models can create incentives for improving the educational and research effectiveness of universities, and consequently providing them with a competitive advantage over its competitors. Therefore, this paper studies how to measure the performance of a university through a mathematical multicriteria analysis and tries to link these results with certain university funding policies existing in the Spanish case. To this end, a reference point-based technique is used, which allows the consideration and aggregation of all the aspects regarded as relevant to assess university performance. The simple and easy way in which the information is provided by this technique makes it valuable for decision makers because of considering two aggregation scenarios: the fully compensatory scenario provides an idea of the overall performance, while the non-compensatory one detects possible improvement areas. This study is carried out in two stages. First, the main results of applying the proposed methodology to the performance analysis evolution of the largest three Spanish public university, over a period of five academic years, are described. Second, a discussion is carried out about some interesting features of the analysis proposed at regional level, and some policy messages are provided. The “intra” regions university performance analysis reveals some institutions with noteworthy behaviors, some with sustained trends throughout the analyzed period and other institutions with more erratic behaviors, within the same regional public university system despite having the identical funding model. However, the findings “inter” regions also reveal that only Catalonia has developed a true performance-based model, in theory and in practice, which has contributed to achieving excellent results at regional level in both teaching and research.

En este artículo se analiza la evolución de la productividad en 47 universidades españolas mediante el Índice de Malmquist durante el período 2002-2009. Los insumos incluidos en el análisis son el Personal Docente e Investigador equivalente a tiempo completo, gastos corrientes en bienes y servicios, mientras los productos son el Número de graduados y la Producción Científica anual por universidad. Utilizando esta metodología, el crecimiento de la productividad se puede descomponer en dos componentes: cambio en la eficiencia técnica y el cambio tecnológico. Los resultados indican que el cambio de la productividad registró un promedio anual de -1.1% en todas las universidades, con un rango entre -15.2% y 18.3%, lo que confirma la hipótesis de una gran heterogeneidad en el Sistema Universitario Público Español respecto del cambio en productividad a lo largo del tiempo. Sin embargo, existen notables diferencias respecto del cambio en productividad a lo largo del tiempo cuando se analiza sólo investigación y sólo docencia, con un crecimiento promedio anual de 14.6% y 6.1% respectivamente. En el caso de la actividad de investigación los cambios positivos fueron derivados principalmente del progreso tecnológico y la mayor productividad inducida por el sistema de incentivos a la investigación de alto impacto de los profesores.