Success can be interpreted and assessed in various ways. This article proposes evaluating university success through performance and efficiency indicators, inspired by the Positioning School of Strategy and New Public Management. This approach faces challenges, such as limited economic data for Polish public universities. The article aimed to identify factors and success levels for public universities in the higher education sector. The research question, “What are the measures and levels of success of public universities?”, was divided into three specific inquiries: key success factors, performance and efficiency indicators, and success levels for selected Polish public universities. The study involved analysing international and Polish university rankings, interviewing 53 public university experts in Poland, and examining efficiency indicators for 10 selected public universities. Critical success factors (research excellence, education excellence, international cooperation) and critical performance indicators were identified. Efficiency indicators demonstrated the good financial condition of selected institutions. Critical success factors and critical performance indicators were defined, and performance and efficiency measures were used to assess the success of Polish public higher education institutions. The authors acknowledge the need for parametric and non-parametric methods to fully evaluate success. The proposed performance-oriented measurement tool can assist public university leaders in making strategic decisions.

Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues is a peer-reviewed journal which publishes original research papers and case studies

The COVID-19 global pandemic has caused an unprecedented disturbance in higher education and the business services sector. In the 2014–2020 financial perspective, the Operational Programme Knowledge Education Development has constituted a response to challenges and an instrument to execute the Europe 2020 Strategy. However, the Programme was not designed to prevent crises, and neither did it foresee the pandemic which surprised the whole world. Despite this, higher education institutions that implemented projects co-financed with the EU funds had to face the “black swan” and ensure the continuity of their activities while improving their resilience to crises. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated how important knowledge management and resilience-building skills are for students to adapt and grow stronger in the face of a crisis. Does higher education teach crisis-resistant competences? As we know from practice and literature, the knowledge gap as regards crisis-resistant competencies is enormous, and the relevant university programmes require strengthening. Therefore, we conducted a literature review about knowledge management in complex crises and conducted research to identify competences that increase resilience to crises. The aim of the article was to examine to what extent the support implemented in the Polish university project contributed to the increase in indicators (output, direct result) and to what extent the level of competences of the project participants increased, including those competences that allowed the participants to adapt to the labour market during the COVID-19 pandemic. For the needs of the study, we used the competence balance method and the measurement of a degree of ratio implementation according to the criteria applied. The results of the study proved that the ratios rose and the project contributed to increasing competences in the project’s participants, improving their crisis resilience. The conclusions of the study allowed us to make recommendations regarding the emergent knowledge strategies about the European Union’s future agenda as well as about knowledge management and university training programs for resilient skills.

Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues is a peer-reviewed journal which publishes original research papers and case studies

The article presents the issues of entrepreneurship and innovativeness of universities in the context of the analysis of the European Union guidelines and determining the competitive position of the university with the use of the strategic group maps. The aim of the article is to present different variants of strategic group maps, called by the authors 1D, 2D and 3D maps, which enable the identification of the competitive situation in the sector of higher education in Poland. The study focused on two sets of criteria of differentiation of the universities’ strategies, which are entrepreneurship and innovativeness. The research problem was formulated in the form of the following questions: whether the described methods of 1D, 2D and 3D maps may be applied to the analysis of competition in the sector of higher education institutions in Poland, in relation to entrepreneurship and innovativeness.

Purpose | The aim of this article is to assess the success of public universities in Poland and its critical factors, as well as to identify the “resilience competencies” of management staff that, in their opinion, influenced their success during the Covid-19 pandemic. Research method | The indicator method (analysis of financial indicators: ROA and ROE) was used to assess the success of public universities in Poland. The subject of the analysis conducted in 2025 regarded the financial statements for the years 2019–2022, which included the period of the Covid-19 pandemic. The CAWI method was used to assess the critical success factors (CSF). The opinion of 53 people from the management staff (rectors, deans and chancellors) was collected in the initial period of the pandemic. When developing the survey questionnaire, the diagnostic survey method was used and inspired by the rankings of universities, both national and international (ARWU, The World University Ranking, U-Multirank, Webomatrics, Perspektywy). The CSF was estimated using the arithmetic mean, and the “resilience competencies” were identified based on the opinions of the management staff using disjunctive choice analysis. Results | The results of the conducted research show that during the pandemic, public universities achieved success measured by efficiency. The management staff of higher education institutions indicated 5 KCS: research excellence, teaching excellence, image of the university, fate of graduates and international cooperation. The results of the conducted research led to determining 15 “resilience competencies” that, in the opinion of the management staff, strengthened the success of the university. Originality / value / implications / recommendations | The conducted research brings added value in testing “resilience competencies” that significantly enhance success in unpredictable crisis situations.