The aim of this article is to present new ideas in evaluating Shanghai University's Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). One issue frequently put forth in various publications is that the Shanghai rankings are sensitive to the relative weight they attribute to each variable. As a possible remedy to this issue, the statistical I-distance method is proposed to be used. Based on a sample containing the top 100 ranked universities, the results show a significant correlation with the official ARWU list. However, some inconsistencies concerning European universities have been noticed and elaborated upon.
Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a decision making tool based on linear programming for measuring the relative efficiency of a set of comparable units. Besides the identification of relatively efficient and inefficient units, DEA identifies the sources and level of inefficiency for each of the inputs and outputs. This paper is a survey of the basic DEA models. A comparison of DEA models is given. The effect of model orientation (input or output) on the efficiency frontier and the effect of the convexity requirements on returns to scale are examined. The paper also explains how DEA models can be used to assess efficiency.
Students' evaluations of teaching are increasingly used by universities to evaluate teaching performance. However, these evaluations are controversial mainly due to fact that students value various aspects of excellent teaching differently. Therefore, in this paper we propose a new approach to student evaluation of university teaching based on data from conjoint analysis. Conjoint analysis is a multivariate technique used to analyze the structure of individuals' preference. In particular, our approach accounts for different importance students attach to various aspects of teaching. Moreover, it accounts explicitly for heterogeneity arising from student preferences, and incorporates it to form comprehensive teaching evaluation score. We have conducted survey and confirmed applicability and efficiency of the proposed approach.
BackgroundSustainable development and public health quite strongly correlate, being connected and conditioned by one another. This paper therein attempts to offer a representation of Europe’s current situation of sustainable development in the area of public health.MethodsA dataset on sustainable development in the area of public health consisting of 31 European countries (formally proposed by the European Union Commission and EUROSTAT) has been used in this paper in order to evaluate said issue for the countries listed thereof. A statistical method which synthesizes several indicators into one quantitative indicator has also been utilized. Furthermore, the applied method offers the possibility to obtain an optimal set of variables for future studies of the problem, as well as for the possible development of indicators.ResultsAccording to the results obtained, Norway and Iceland are the two foremost European countries regarding sustainable development in the area of public health, whereas Romania, Lithuania, and Latvia, some of the European Union’s newest Member States, rank lowest. The results also demonstrate that the most significant variables (more than 80%) in rating countries are found to be “healthy life years at birth, females” (r2 = 0.880), “healthy life years at birth, males” (r2 = 0.864), “death rate due to chronic diseases, males” (r2 = 0.850), and “healthy life years, 65, females” (r2 = 0.844).ConclusionsBased on the results of this paper, public health represents a precondition for sustainable development, which should be continuously invested in and improved.After the assessment of the dataset, proposed by EUROSTAT in order to evaluate progress towards the agreed goals of the EU Sustainable Development Strategy (SDS), this paper offers an improved set of variables, which it is hoped, may initiate further studies concerning this problem.
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