The hybrid returns-to-scale model and its extension by production trade-offs: an application to the efficiency assessment of public universities in Malaysia

Abstract

returns-to-scale (CRS or VRS) models. In this paper we suggest that these models may sometimes underutilize our knowledge of the underlying production process. For example, in the context of higher education considered in the reported application, individual universities often maintain a certain student-to-staff ratio which points that there should be an approximately proportional relationship between students and staff, at least in the medium to long run. A different example is an observation that the teaching of postgraduate students generally requires more resources than the teaching of the same number of undergraduate students. In order to incorporate such information in a DEA model, we propose a novel approach that combines the recently developed hybrid returns-to-scale DEA model with the use of production trade-offs. The suggested approach leads to a better-informed model of production technology than the conventional DEA models. We illustrate this methodology by an application to Malaysian public universities. This approach results in a tangibly better efficiency discrimination than would be possible with the standard DEA models.

Assessing the Efficiency of Public Universities through DEA. A Case Study

“…DEA has also been used to evaluate performance in basic education institutions [28][29][30], universities [9,[13][14][15], academic programs [12,31], research centers [11] and teachers [32,33].…”

“…Use the cross-efficiency scores from the previous step in models (14) and (15). Solve Model (14), if the optimal solution is (15) to select a new set of weights for all DMUs, then do η…”

“…The proper choice of input and output variables is a key aspect, as these have a direct impact on efficiency measurement. This aspect has been accomplished by different papers [9][10][11][12][13][14][15].…”

Consistent proportional trade-offs in data envelopment analysis

“…In this section, we use an example to illustrate the proposed models and the way the suggested algorithm can be applied to identify sets with consistent trade-offs. Motivated by the case of "public universities in Malaysia" given first in Podinovski and Wan Husain (2015), details of our numerical example are designed as follows. Let us assume that there exist 20 hypothetical engineering schools as DMUs in the analysis.…”

“…Our data set is shown in university, if the number of academic staff is increased, all types of students can be increased, while the amount of research funding and research publications remain unchanged. Given the research funding unchanged, we also suppose that if the academic staff is decreased, not only the number of students but also the number of research publications decreases (for more details see Podinovski & Wan Husain, 2015).…”