Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020

4.2.7 Evaluation of the Institute for Advanced 
Studies (IHS)
The Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS) launched an 
institutional evaluation by an external panel in the 
winter of 2018/2019 on its own initiative. Since the 
IHS had set itself a new mission and ambitious goals 
in 2015, the intention of the responsible IHS Board of 
Trustees was to have the status of implementation of 
the new mission reviewed externally and to collect 
ideas and suggestions for further improvements to 
215 For a more in-depth history of the IHS, see Christian Fleck: “Wie Neues nicht entstanden ist. Die Gründung des Instituts für 
Höhere Studien in Wien durch Ex-Österreicher und die Ford Foundation” (How new things were not created. The founding of the 
Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna by Expats and the Ford Foundation). Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissen-
schaften (Austrian Journal of Historical Sciences) 11/1, 2000, 129-178, 
https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-234866.
the IHS. The evaluation stems from the reorganisa-
tion process that began in 2014.
The IHS was originally founded in 1963 as a 
non-university research institution with the aim of 
reviving social sciences in the Austrian higher educa-
tion landscape as these were underdeveloped at that 
time. For this reason, the IHS was founded as an in-
dependent organisation by renowned emigrants and 
the Ford Foundation.
215
In the following years, the 
IHS succeeded in establishing itself as a core part of 
social sciences in Austria and gained widespread ac-
ceptance with its postgraduate programmes. The IHS 
environment has changed with the increased perfor-
mance capability of Austrian universities in the fields 
of economics and empirical social sciences. Its has 
thus also lost its relatively unique selling proposition 
with respect to qualitatively ambitious research and 
teaching in the social and economic sciences, espe-
cially in the postgraduate area. The IHS failed to fun-
damentally adapt its own structure and range of ser-
vices to the changes in environmental conditions. 
Although it is still an important stakeholder in the 
context of national research, albeit one that is in-
creasingly losing importance, organisational and aca-
demic silos at the Institute demonstrated a low level 
of research performance overall in many departments 
and considerable identity problems.
Furthermore, the Ministry of Science discontin-
ued the provision of basic funding following a 
change in policy, meaning that the Ministry of 
Finance became the main financier together with 
the Austrian National Bank, which had remained on 
board. Other contributors also withdrew or signifi-
cantly reduced their basic support. The situation at 
the IHS was so critical at the start of the 2010s that 
the new Board of Trustees and key stakeholders 
took action and decided on a comprehensive reform 
in 2014/15. The most significant changes included a 
new mission statement, abandoning teaching of 

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