Is inequality among universities increasing? Gini coefficients and the elusive rise of elite universities

One of the unintended consequences of the New Public Management
(NPM) in universities is often feared to be a division between elite institutions
focused on research and large institutions with teaching missions. However, institutional
isomorphisms provide counter-incentives. For example, university rankings
focus on certain output parameters such as publications, but not on others (e.g.,
patents). In this study, we apply Gini coefficients to university rankings in order to
assess whether universities are becoming more unequal, at the level of both the
world and individual nations. Our results do not support the thesis that universities
are becoming more unequal. If anything, we predominantly find homogenisation,
both at the level of the global comparisons and nationally. In a more restricted
dataset (using only publications in the natural and life sciences), we find increasing
inequality for those countries, which used NPM during the 1990s, but not during the
2000s. Our findings suggest that increased output steering from the policy side leads
to a global conformation to performance standards.