Assessing the Comparative Efficiency of Higher Education Institutions in the UK by the Means of Data Envelopment Analysis

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the comparative of higher education institutions in the UK. The governmental inititatives of the decade within this sector have given emphasis to issues of accountability, value for money and cost control. The reporting of various statistics regarding the universities' activities only fully achieves its potential value if it is used to define comprehensive concepts of performance and goal achievements informed by the institutions' missions. In that spirit, we propose concepts of cost and outcome efficiency in order to gain further insights into the universities' operations. Data envelopment analysis and its recent advances were used to asses the two types of efficiency. The application of the methodology to 45 universities in the UK revealed a subset of six institutions that showed satisfactory performance across alternative efficiency tests.

Comparing efficiency in a cross-country perspective: the case of Italian and Spanish state universities

“…While there are many studies on efficiency analysis of HE institutions in a single country (e.g. Abbott &Doucouliagos, 2003 andCarrington, et al, 2005 -Australia;Athanassopoulos &Shale, 1997, andJ.Johnes, 2006 -UK;Agasisti & Dal Bianco, 2006 -Italy;Warning, 2004 -Germany;McMillan & Datta, 1998-Canada, Martínez Cabrera, 2000, the literature on comparative analysis across different countries is still very limited. To the best of the authors' knowledge, there are only three streams of contributions on this specific issue.…”

Measuring the research performance of Chinese higher education institutions using data envelopment analysis

“…Its popularity in these contexts derives from the fact that it is based on a distance function approach and hence can handle multiple outputs and multiple inputs; it does not assume any specific behavioural assumptions of the firm (eg cost minimisation or profit maximisation); it makes no assumption regarding the distribution of efficiencies; and it requires no a priori information regarding the prices of either the inputs or the outputs. Despite there being a plethora of studies which examine the efficiency of the higher education sectors of various countries such as the UK, the USA, Canada, Finland, Israel and Australia (Athanassopoulos & Shale 1997;Johnes 2006a;Ahn et al 1989;Breu & Raab 1994;Haksever & Muragishi 1998;Arecelus & Coleman 1997;El Mahgary & Lahdelma 1995;Friedman & Sinuany-Stern 1997;Coelli et al 1998;Avkiran 2001;Abbott & Doucouliagos 2003), little work has been done on measuring the efficiency of higher education institutions (HEIs) in China.…”

Universities in Mexico: a measure of its efficiency through data envelopment analysis with bootstrap

“…De acuerdo con la revisión de la literatura realizada, se encontraron los siguientes autores que han utilizado como input el financiamiento: Athanassopoulos & Shale (1997), Beasley (1990) Tomkins & Green (1988). La selección de este input se hizo con la finalidad de saber qué tan eficientemente se utilizaron los recursos financieros en las universidades.…”

“…Thanassoulis, Kortelainen, Johnes & Johnes (2009) analizan la eficiencia en las instituciones de educación superior en Inglaterra y evalúan su estructura de costos, la eficiencia técnica y la productividad; los resultados revelan que para la mayoría de las instituciones tienen ineficiencia económica, y en cuanto a la productividad no existe crecimiento en el periodo de estudio. Athanassopoulos & Shale (1997) comparan 45 instituciones de educación superior en el Reino Unido, donde revisan la eficiencia técnica, obteniendo en la mayoría de las universidades una mala optimización de los recursos, por lo que realizan propuestas para maximizar la cantidad de alumnos graduados, así como mayor número de publicaciones de los profesores. Sinuany-Stern, Mehrez & Barboy (1994) ejecutaron un estudio de caso donde se evaluaron los departamentos académicos en la Universidad Ben-Gurion, a través del DEA, utilizando el modelo de Charnes, Cooper y Rhodes (CCR); se aplicó también un análisis de cluster para dividir los departamentos en varios conjuntos, Las universidades en México: una medida de su eficiencia a través del análisis de la envolvente de datos con bootstrap | José César Lenin Navarro Chávez, Rodrigo Gómez Monge, Zacarías Torres Hernández | pp.…”