Measuring Efficiency: A Comparison of Multilevel Modelling and Data Envelopment Analysis in the Context of Higher Education

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) and multilevel modelling (MLM) are applied to a data set of 54,564 graduates from UK universities in 1993 to assess whether the choice of technique affects the measurement of universities’ performance. A methodology developed by Thanassoulis and Portela (2002; Education Economics, 10(2), pp. 183–207) allows each individual's DEA efficiency score to be decomposed into two components: one attributable to the university at which the student studied and the other attributable to the individual student. From the former component, a measure of each institution's teaching efficiency is derived and compared to the university effects from various multilevel models. The comparisons are made within four broad subjects: pure science, applied science, social science and arts. The results show that the rankings of universities derived from the DEA efficiencies which measure the universities’ own performance (i.e., having excluded the efforts of the individuals) are not strongly correlated with the university rankings derived from the university effects of the multilevel models. The data were also used to perform a university‐level DEA. The university efficiency scores derived from these DEAs are largely unrelated to the scores from the individual‐level DEAs, confirming a result from a smaller data set (Johnes, 2006a; European Journal of Operational Research, forthcoming). However, the university‐level DEAs provide efficiency scores which are generally strongly related to the university effects of the multilevel models.     

Quality of higher education and earnings: evidence from Finland using field-of-study-level quality measures

Using administrative data from Finland, this paper empirically examines the relationship between university graduates’ early career earnings and three measures of university quality: the number of teachers per student, the number of publications per researcher and the number of applicants per admitted student. A distinction to previous studies is made by paying special attention to field-of-study heterogeneity: the quality measures are allowed to vary by a student’s field, while the heterogeneity of earnings and individuals across fields is accounted for in the analysis. For the most part, the results indicate that the relationship between institution quality and earnings is rather weak; however, certain significant quality effects are also found. In particular, the teachers/student ratio is found to be positively associated with the earnings of women and graduates from the humanities. Overall, the results indicate considerable heterogeneity in quality effects across genders and fields.     

The transient and persistent efficiency of Italian and German universities: a stochastic frontier analysis

Despite measures on the European level to increase the compatibility between the higher education sectors, the recent literature exposes variations in their efficiencies. To gain insights into these differences, we split the efficiency term according to the two management levels each university is confronted with. We separate short-term and long-term efficiency while controlling for unobserved institution-specific heterogeneity. We argue that the first term reflects the efficiency of the individual universities working within the country, while the second term echoes the influence of the overall country-specific higher education structure. The cross-country comparison displays whether efficiency differences between countries are related to the individual performance of their universities or their higher education structure. This allows more purposeful policy recommendations and expands the literature regarding the efficiency of universities in a fundamental way. Choosing Italy and Germany as two important illustrative examples, we show that the Italian higher education sector exhibits a higher overall efficiency value. With the individual universities working at the upper bound of efficiency in both countries, the remaining inefficiency and the gap between the countries are caused by persistent, structural inefficiency. Future measures should hence aim at the country-specific structure and not solely at the activities of single universities.     

Assessing the value of short-term study abroad programmes to students

For many universities, students participating in short-term faculty-led programmes make up a large portion of the total study abroad population. In this article, we report the results of a unique choice experiment in which 1255 students were asked about their personal characteristics and their preferences for study abroad programme attributes. Using a random parameters logistic regression model, we find that students attitudes towards risk, their experience with international travel and their beliefs about whether study abroad would help them professionally were major determinants of whether a student expressed interest in studying abroad. We also estimate students’ willingness to pay for various programme attributes, including destination, programme duration, course type and the number of experiential learning activities. We find that the highest value programmes give students credit towards their major rather than towards the university core or as an elective and that they are 3–4 weeks in length rather than 2 or 6 weeks. Also, while students value more experiential learning activities per week, each additional trip adds less value with no additional value beyond four activities. Results are useful for practitioners interested in maximizing student participation while effectively managing study abroad budgets.     

What are the top five journals in economics? A new meta-ranking

We construct a meta-ranking of 277 economics journals based on 22 different rankings. The ranking incorporates bibliometric indicators from four different databases (Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar, and RePEc). We account for the different scaling of the bibliometric indicators by standardizing each ranking score. We run a principal component analysis to assign weights to each ranking. In our meta-ranking, the top five journals are given by: Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Economic Literature (JEL), Journal of Finance, and Econometrica. Additionally, leaving out the JEL as a survey journal and the finance journals in our top 10 list we confirm the perceived top five journals in the economics profession.     

Public overspending in higher education

We study the trade-off between governmental investments in pretertiary and tertiary education from an efficiency point of view. We develop a model comprising agents with different incomes and abilities, public and private schools, and public universities that select applicants based on an admission exam. Reallocating governmental resources from tertiary to pretertiary education may positively affect aggregate production and human capital if some conditions are satisfied. For instance, in an economy with a high proportion of credit-constrained students, a reallocation of expenditure toward public schools benefits many students, compensating for the negative effect of a decrease in public university investments. We also quantitatively investigate the optimal allocation of public investment between pretertiary and tertiary education, and we find that a 10% increase in productivity of public investments in pretertiary education could increase the optimal GDP between 2.1% and 3%.     

An ordinal ranking of economic institutions

We provide the first ranking of countries’ economic institutions using an ordinal methodology. Using the five areas of the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) index, we find that final rankings of a country’s institutions are sensitive to the importance-ordering of Area 1 (Size of Government). When Areas 2–5 are in the most important position, we find that there is no significant difference between the EFW rankings and our rankings. When Area 1 is placed in the most important position, however, a number of European countries with large welfare states but good governance do poorly.     

县际竞争和公共教育财政资源配置——基于空间经济计量研究

根据Moran’s I检验发现,公共教育财政资源地区配置上存在显著空间自相关性,即邻近县之间在配置公共教育财政资源上会互相影响,存在策略性行动,表明县际竞争的存在。此外,县级竞争力强弱受到诸多因素的影响。人均GDP、第二产业劳动力人数、人均居住面积对县级人均教育经费总支出的影响是正面显著的,而少数民族人口比率的影响是负面显著,非农业人口比率的影响是倒U型关系,外省迁入人口和本地适龄人口的影响是非线性的。在估计方法上,空间误差模型比OLS模型要好。     

The impact of degree programmes on university expenditure

This research examines the impact of the number and mix of academic degree programmes on university operating expenditure in the United States. Statistical results are based on data for doctoral and research institutions without medical schools. After controlling for other factors influencing expenditure, additional degree programmes are associated with significant increases in expenditure, with doctoral programmes having a 40% higher marginal impact on total expenditure than baccalaureate programmes. Most institutions are found to be smaller than the expenditure-minimizing size and to have higher expenditure per full-time-equivalent student. As specified, the models explain a large amount of the variation in expenditure across the institutions.     

TRACING THE EFFECTS OF GUARANTEED ADMISSION THROUGH THE COLLEGE PROCESS: EVIDENCE FROM A POLICY DISCONTINUITY IN THE TEXAS 10% PLAN

The Texas 10% law states that students who graduated among the top 10% of their high school class are guaranteed admission to public universities in Texas. We estimate the causal effects of this admissions guarantee on a sequence of connected decisions: students' application behavior, admission decisions by the university, students' enrollment choices conditional on admission; as well as the resulting college achievement. We identify these effects by comparing students just above and just below the top 10% rank cut off. We assume that other student characteristics and incentives are continuous at this cut off. We find that students react to incentives created by the admissions guarantee—for example, by reducing applications to competing private universities. The effects of the admissions guarantee depend on the university and the type of students it attracts. The 10% law is binding and alters the decisions of the admissions committees. We find little evidence that the law increases diversity or leads to meaningful mismatch for the marginal student admitted. (JEL I23, I28)     

刍论高校二级学院行政秘书的公关问题

高等院校二级学院的行政秘书在高校行政系统正常运转过程中发挥着十分重要的作用,其中公关角色通常被人们所忽视,我们有必要从高校二级学院行政秘书的岗位职责出发,明确高校二级学院行政秘书的公关角色及应该具备的能力,并根据这些要求不断提高自己的工作能力。     

合著数据表征的中国研究型大学产学研合作绩效评估

大学直接促进社会经济发展一直是学术界和科技政策制定者关注的话题,然而,人们很难回答中国哪些大学为企业提供了最多的科技信息和研发服务。利用84所研究型大学的校企合著数据来弥补这一缺失,并评价了这些大学产学研合作绩效。一系列组织特征变量与校企合作指标显著相关,验证了基于校企合著评价模型的有效性,也为多维视角的排名和比较提供了思路。考虑到存在一些理论和测量上的基本问题,现阶段校企合著数据更适合作为大学综合排名榜的辅助指标,而不是专门设计一个校企合作排行榜。     

State appropriations and undergraduate borrowing: more debt,less money

When state appropriations decrease, public universities respond by raising tuition. Students borrow more in response to both tuition increases and appropriation cuts. This article investigates the feedback of how borrowing and tuition influence state appropriations. Using a panel data set of 450 four-year public universities from 1999 to 2012, we employ three-stage least squares techniques to control for the endogeneity between state appropriations, tuition and student borrowing. There is evidence that state policy-makers respond to increases in university tuition and student borrowing by decreasing future appropriation levels. After controlling for the effect of appropriations on tuition and borrowing, a one-dollar increase in student borrowing reduces state appropriations per student by $0.06, and a one-dollar increase in tuition results in a decrease of $0.45 in state appropriations per student. When universities increase tuition for reasons other than a reduction in state appropriations, policy-makers respond with a significant cut in future appropriations which could signal an incentive strategy.     

An analysis of Fundeb's contribution to the quality of public education in Brazilian municipalities

This study analyzed the effect of the Fund for the Maintenance and Development of Basic Education and for the Appreciation of Education Professionals (Fundeb) on the National System of Basic Education Assessment (Saeb) results of Brazilian municipalities by estimating a spatial panel model with information from 2007 and 2017, which include the 10 years of the fund's implementation. The results indicated that the 10% increase in the Fundeb amount per student received by the municipality raised the Saeb score by approximately one point. Furthermore, the increase in the fund's value in neighboring municipalities contributed to increasing the municipality's Saeb score by approximately three points. These results are evidence in favor of the hypothesis that Fundeb has encouraged the management and adoption of good practices in municipal education, which influence the decisions and behavior of the neighboring municipalities’ managers to also improve their practices and results.     

The negative effect of NCAA football bowl bans on university enrolment and applications

Universities provide consumption amenities to students in addition to their educational services. Collegiate sports programs have been characterized as one of these consumption amenities. Previous research has shown that athletic success has a positive impact on both the quantity and quality of students attending a university. Alternatively, we analyse if athletic malfeasance, as measured by NCAA postseason bans of football programs, negatively affects either the quantity or quality of student applications or enrolment. Our findings suggest that athletic malfeasance that results in a postseason football bowl ban lowers the quantity of applications, admittances and enrolment to a university. In addition, we find that universities respond to decreased application numbers by increasing their admission rates, while students who are admitted to the school enrol at the same rate as before the ban. Thus, the reduced enrolment is the result of a smaller applicant pool and not the result of a lower rate of enrolment. Lastly, we do not detect any reduction in student quality at the sanctioned university. Our results demonstrate that impropriety by an athletics program directly impacts a university’s non-athlete student enrolment by influencing the amenity mix provided by the university.     

美国加州公立高等教育的办学特色及其启示

美国是世界上最发达的高等教育国家之一,而加州又是美国公立高等教育最发达的一个州,其教育质量和效率举世公认,是美国高等教育的缩影。文章作者通过对美国加州公立大学的走访和考察,了解了美国加州公立高等教育的基本情况,总结了其办学特色,并提出了铜陵学院在进行省级示范应用型高校建设中的借鉴经验。     

创新研究生教育工作 促进高校后备干部队伍建设

通过分析研究生教育与高校后备干部建设的相关性,并呈现中国研究生教育中所存在的问题,提出从创新研究生教育管理的视角,全方位地提升研究生的能力和素质,以促进中国高校后备干部队伍的建设。     

COURNOT AND BERTRAND EQUILIBRIA COMPARED: A CRITICAL REVIEW AND AN EXTENSION FROM THE OUTPUT‐STRUCTURE VIEWPOINT*

This paper compares Bertrand competition with Cournot competition. In previous studies, the welfare ranking has not been examined in any general setting. One purpose of this work is to fill this gap. In the Zanchettin model, the ranking regarding the less efficient firm's output is sensitive to the degree of asymmetry between firms, whereas the welfare ranking is not. Another goal of this study aims at dealing with this paradox. We demonstrate that the rankings regarding average price, average output and the Herfindahl index are not sensitive to the degree of asymmetry, and hence can explain the welfare ranking.     

Researcher rank stability across alternative output measurement schemes in the context of a time limited research evaluation: the New Zealand case

This article focuses on the stability of rankings of academics by research productivity in the context of short-term decision-making. In particular, the growing use of national research assessment exercises (NRAE) has increased interest in identifying the contributions of individual researchers to an assessment unit’s output and ranking. The article concentrates on the assessment of individuals using plausible journal ranking schemes. We find that despite statistical evidence of a high degree of stability across journal ranking schemes as indicated by rank correlation coefficients, the particular ranking scheme used is of great importance to individual researchers. This applies with particular force to academics working within a NRAE environment based on individual assessment such as New Zealand’s PBRF.     

Power and publications in Chinese academia

In power-oriented societies, academia may not be immune to the influence of power. This paper studies the power-publication link by applying an event-study strategy to a panel dataset of the publication and biographical information of deans of economics schools in Chinese universities. We find that (i) deanship increases an individual's publication by 0.7 articles per year; (ii) the increased publications stem from work coauthored with other researchers within the same university; (iii) the topics of the increased publications are more likely to deviate from the deans’ research area prior to becoming deans; and (iv) the power effect is smaller for top universities and leading journals, and for scholars with more pre-dean publications. These patterns appear consistent with the role of power in resource allocation rather than the impact of ability or reputation of the deans and thus have implications on distortions in knowledge production.