In recent years, performance measurement (PM) tools and practices have been implemented at literally hundreds of universities in Western countries. Accordingly, PM practices have been adopted in practice in all countries infected by New Public Management (NPM) doctrine. The seemingly well-intentioned reforms—designed to improve universities’ economy, efficiency and effectiveness—have led to widespread criticism among scholars, ranging from fierce resistance and loud outbursts to somewhat more analytical and theoretical arguments. Most scholars who study university management in general and university PM systems in particular have recognized there are many more cons than pros in the recent developments. Scholars see PM systems in universities as structures of attention rather than formal systems of accountability.

This study reports empirical findings for university PM in Finland and concentrates on the problems of measuring quality aspects in universities and in academic work. The principal empirical data of this study were gathered in 2010 and 2012 from 12 faculties in three Finnish multidisciplinary universities. The data were collected with an Internet-based survey questionnaire sent to all employees in the chosen faculties.

This study reports which PM indicators Finnish university personnel would prefer in their own work in terms of quality and quantity, and how the Finnish Ministry of Education & Culture (MOE) has implemented quality aspects in the ministry’s PM system. The MOE’s PM systems, which define the actual amount of funding an individual university receives, have largely been copied by individual universities’ and faculties’ internal PM systems that evaluate academics’ performance. The funding scheme for universities is vast and complicated, and different types of outputs and their respective indicators are only loosely coupled with different types of funding.