German Cities with Universities: Socioeconomic Position and University Performance

TL;DR

This study explores how universities influence city prosperity, revealing a significant correlation especially in larger cities with high-performing universities based on output, impact, and collaboration metrics.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence linking university performance and city socioeconomic status, highlighting the importance of university quality in urban development.

Findings

Higher university performance correlates with increased city socioeconomic indicators.

Larger cities show a stronger relationship between university presence and prosperity.

Universities with higher output, impact, and collaboration metrics have a greater influence.

Abstract

We investigated the role of universities in the prosperity of cities and regions. Performance characteristics of universities are derived from the Leiden Ranking 2020. The socioeconomic strength of a city is determined with the urban scaling methodology. Our study shows a significant relation between the presence of a university in a city and its socioeconomic indicators, particularly for larger cities, and that this is especially the case for universities with higher values of their output, impact and collaboration indicators.