Efficiency, costs, rankings and heterogeneity: the case of US higher education

Agasisti, Tommaso; Johnes, Geraint

doi:10.1080/03075079.2013.818644

Cited by 85 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Johnes et al (2005) take an additional step by estimating cost functions specific to certain pre-specified subgroups of institutions. A similar creation of sample subgroups is realized using the latent class estimation, amongst others applied by Agasisti and Johnes (2015). But, both approaches are not satisfactory due to the difficulty to define main attributes which are used for the categorization and the resulting blurry distinction between the types of institutions.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Persistent inefficiency in the higher education sector: evidence from Germany

Gralka

2018

Education Economics

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractEvaluations of the Higher Education Sector are receiving increased attention, due to the rising expenditures and the absence of efficiency enhancing market pressure. To what extent universities are able to eliminate inefficiency is a question that has only partially been answered. This paper argues that heterogeneity among universities as well as persistent inefficiency hinder the institutions to achieve full efficiency -at least in the short run. Two standard and one novel specification of the Stochastic Frontier Analysis are applied to a new, comprehensive set of panel data to show how the standard efficiency evaluation changes when both aspects are taken into account. It is the first time that the idea of persistent inefficiency is considered in the analysis of the German Higher Education Sector. The comparison reveals that the disregard of heterogeneity distorts the estimation results towards lower efficiency values. The newly introduced specification improves the accuracy of the heterogeneity assumption and exposes that inefficiency tends to be long term and persistent rather than short term and residual. This implies that increasing efficiency requires a comprehensive change of the university structure.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Persistent inefficiency in the higher education sector: evidence from Germany

Gralka

2018

Education Economics

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“…Gnewuch and Wohlrabe Gnewuch and Wohlrabe [28] used partial frontier analysis to identify super-efficient economics departments. There are several studies available in the literature which have investigated efficiency aspects in the US higher education system [29][30][31][32][33][34].…”

Section: Conceptual Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Efficiently Do Elite US Universities Produce Highly Cited Papers?

2019

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While output and impact assessments were initially at the forefront of institutional research evaluations, efficiency measurements have become popular in recent years. Research efficiency is measured by indicators that relate research output to input. The additional consideration of research input in research evaluation is obvious, since the output depends on the input. The present study is based on a comprehensive dataset with input and output data for 50 US universities. As input, we used research expenses, and as output the number of highly-cited papers. We employed Data Efficiency Analysis (DEA), Free Disposal Hull (FDH) and two more robust models: the order-m and order-α approaches. The results of the DEA and FDH analysis show that Harvard University and Boston College can be called especially efficient compared to the other universities. While the strength of Harvard University lies in its high output of highly-cited papers, the strength of Boston College is its small input. In the order-α and order-m frameworks, Harvard University remains efficient, but Boston College becomes super-efficient. We produced university rankings based on adjusted efficiency scores (subsequent to regression analyses), in which single covariates (e.g., the disciplinary profile) are held constant.

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“…Most universities focus on recruiting high quality students and retaining them for reputation and revenue (Bedggood & Donovan, 2012). Rankings have become important for many schools as they compete for top students (Agasisti & Johnes, 2015;Rauhvargers, 2013), making student satisfaction an important consideration (Chong & Ahmed, 2015;Douglas, Douglas, McClelland, & Davies, 2015). In addition, most students expect their degree to offer them good job prospects (Browne, Kaldenberg, Browne, & Brown, 1998;Douglas et al 2015;Gibson, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Effects of a holistic, experiential curriculum on business students' satisfaction and career confidence

Caza

Brower

Wayne

2015

The International Journal of Management Education

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a b s t r a c tStudents' satisfaction with their major curriculum and their perceptions of career readiness are important drivers of recruitment, retention and rankings. As a result, universities, and business schools in particular, are redesigning curricula to be responsive to marketplace demands. Curricula are increasingly using holistic and experiential learning tools to foster student satisfaction and career confidence. To connect these practices to the outcomes of satisfaction and confidence, we examined student responses to a newly designed, experiential undergraduate business curriculum. The results indicated that, compared to students who graduated from a traditional, functionally structured curriculum, students graduating from the holistic, experiential curriculum were significantly higher in their satisfaction and career self-efficacy (but not leader self-efficacy). These findings provide evidence that holistic, experiential curricular redesign is related to improved student attitudes and confidence. We conclude by discussing the implications for education and future research.

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Efficiency, costs, rankings and heterogeneity: the case of US higher education

Cited by 85 publications

References 29 publications

Persistent inefficiency in the higher education sector: evidence from Germany

Persistent inefficiency in the higher education sector: evidence from Germany

How Efficiently Do Elite US Universities Produce Highly Cited Papers?

Effects of a holistic, experiential curriculum on business students' satisfaction and career confidence

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