Abstract
Over the last 20–30 years, many European governments have implemented reforms to improve the efficiency and competitiveness of their national higher education and research systems. They have granted universities more autonomy while introducing new accountability tools and fostering competition through performance-based funding schemes. The growing emphasis on productivity and efficiency has led to the diffusion of a variety of performance indicators, including publication and citation counts, and university rankings. Another approach increasingly applied in the higher education sector is frontier efficiency analysis. Similarly to university rankings, efficiency analyses include several indicators for research and teaching in order to assess the performance of a university or a university department. However, as opposed to most rankings, they relate the outputs to the inputs used and do not necessarily favor larger or richer institutions. Moreover, estimation techniques such as Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) do not require any assumption about the form of the production function and allow for different factor combinations to achieve efficiency. The method thus accounts for the diversity among universities and does not necessarily penalize more teaching-oriented institutions as compared to research-oriented ones. In this contribution we present the frontier efficiency approach and its application to higher education, highlighting the main estimation techniques and methodological specifications. We provide an overview of studies that have applied DEA to the higher education sector and discuss their results, methodological contributions, and shortcomings. We conclude by identifying the advantages and limitations of frontier efficiency approaches as compared to other performance measures in higher education and delineating possible areas for further research.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Abbott M, Doucouliagos C (2003) The efficiency of Australian universities: a data envelopment analysis. Econ Educ Rev 22(1):89–97
Abramo G, D’Angelo CA, Pugini F (2008) The measurement of Italian universities’ research productivity by a non parametric bibliometric methodology. Scientometrics 76(2):225–244
Agasisti T, Dal Bianco A (2006) Data envelopment analysis to the Italian university system: theoretical issues and policy implications. Int J Bus Perform Meas 8(4):344–367
Agasisti T, Johnes G (2009) Beyond frontiers: comparing the efficiency of higher education decision making units across more than one country. Educ Econ 17(1):59–79
Agasisti T, Pérez-Esparrells C (2010) Comparing efficiency in a cross-country perspective: the case of Italian and Spanish state universities. Higher Educ 59:85–103
Agasisti T, Pohl C (2012) Comparing German and Italian public universities: convergence or divergence in the higher education landscape? Manage Dec Econ 33:71–85
Agasisti T, Salerno C (2007) Assessing the cost efficiency of Italian universities. Educ Econ 15(4):455–471
Agasisti T, Catalano G, Landoni P, Verganti R (2012) Evaluating the performance of academic departments: an analysis of research-related output efficiency. Res Eval 21:2–14
Aigner DC, Lovell CAK, Schmidt P (1977) Formulation and estimation of stochastic frontier production function models. J Econ 6:21–38
Archibald RB, Feldman DH (2011) Why does college cost so much? Oxford University Press, New York
Athanassopoulos AD, Shale E (1997) Assessing the comparative efficiency of higher education institutions in the UK by the means of data envelopment analysis. Educ Econ 5(2):117–134
Avkiran NK (2001) Investigating technical and scale efficiencies of Australian universities through data envelopment analysis. Socio-Econ Plann Sci 35(1):57–80
Beasley J (1990) Comparing university departments. Omega Int J Manage Sci 18(2):171–183
Beasley J (1995) Determining teaching and research efficiencies. J Oper Res Soc 46:441–452
Bonaccorsi A, Daraio C (2004) Econometric approaches to the analysis of productivity of R&D systems: production functions and production frontiers. In: Moed HF, Glänzel W, Schmoch U (eds) Handbook of quantitative science and technology research: the use of publication and patent statistics in studies on S&T systems. Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp 51–74
Bonaccorsi A, Daraio C, Simar L (2006) Advanced indicators of productivity of universities: an application of robust nonparametric methods to Italian data. Scientometrics 66(2):389–410
Carrington R, Coelli T, Prasada Rao DS (2005) The performance of Australian universities: conceptual issues and preliminary results. Econ Pap 24(2):145–163
Caves DW, Christensen LR, Diewert WE (1982) The economic theory of index numbers and the measurement of input, output and productivity. Econometrica 50(6):1393–1414
Charnes A, Cooper W, Rhodes E (1978) Measuring the efficiency of decision making units. Eur J Oper Res 2(6):429–444
Coelli TJ, Prasada Rao DS, O’Donnell CJ, Battese GE (2005) An introduction to efficiency and productivity analysis, 2nd edn. Springer, New York
Daraio C, Simar L (2005) Introducing environmental variables in nonparametric frontier models: a probabilistic approach. J Prod Anal 24:93–121
Deem R, Brehony KJ (2005) Management as ideology: the case of ‘new managerialism’ in higher education. Oxf Rev Educ 31(2):217–235
Fandel G (2007) On the performance of universities in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany: government’s redistribution of funds judged using DEA efficiency measures. Eur J Oper Res 176:521–533
Farrell MJ (1957) The measurement of productive efficiency. J R Stat Soc A (Gen) 120:253–289
Flegg AT, Allen DO, Field K, Thurlow TW (2004) Measuring the efficiency of British universities: a multi-period data envelopment analysis. Educ Econ 12(3):231–249
Hazelkorn E (2011) Rankings and the reshaping of higher education: the battle for world-class excellence. Macmillan, Basingstoke
Johnes J (2004) Efficiency measurement. In: Johnes G, Johnes J (eds) The international handbook on the economics of education. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, pp 613–742
Johnes J (2006) Data envelopment analysis and its application to the measurement of efficiency in higher education. Econ Educ Rev 25:273–288
Johnes J (2008) Efficiency and productivity change in the English higher education sector from 1996/97 to 2004/05. Manchester Sch 76(6):653–674
Johnes G, Johnes J (1993) Measuring the research performance of UK economics departments: an application of data envelopment analysis. Oxf Econ Pap 45:332–347
Joumady O, Ris C (2005) Performance in European higher education: a non-parametric production frontier approach. Educ Econ 12(2):189–205
Kempkes G, Pohl C (2010) The efficiency of German universities: some evidence from nonparametric and parametric methods. Appl Econ 42:2063–2079
Madden G, Savage S, Kemp S (1997) Measuring public sector efficiency: a study of economic departments in Australian universities. Educ Econ 5(2):153–168
Ollsen M, Peters MA (2005) Neoliberalism, higher education and the knowledge economy: from the free market to knowledge capitalism. J Educ Policy 20(3):313–345
Simar L, Wilson PW (1998) Sensitivity analysis of efficiency scores: how to bootstrap in nonparametric frontier models. Manage Sci 44(1):49–61
Tomkins C, Green R (1988) An experiment in the use of data envelopment analysis for evaluating the efficiency of UK university departments of accounting. Financ Account Manag 4(2):147–164
Warning S (2004) Performance differences in German higher education: empirical analysis of strategic groups. Rev Ind Organ 24:393–408
Wolszczak-Derlacz J, Parteka A (2011) Efficiency of European public higher education institutions: a two-stage multicountry approach. Scientometrics 89:887–917
Worthington A, Lee BL (2008) Efficiency, technology and productivity change in Australian universities, 1998-2003. Econ Educ Rev 27(3):285–298
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Nigsch, S., Schenker-Wicki, A. (2015). Frontier Efficiency Analysis in Higher Education. In: Welpe, I., Wollersheim, J., Ringelhan, S., Osterloh, M. (eds) Incentives and Performance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09785-5_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09785-5_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-09784-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-09785-5
eBook Packages: Business and EconomicsBusiness and Management (R0)