Efficiency, technology and productivity change in Australian universities, 1998–2003

Abstract

In this study, productivity growth in thirty-five Australian universities is investigated using nonparametric frontier techniques over the period 1998 to 2003. The inputs included in the analysis are full-time equivalent academic and non-academic staff, non-labour expenditure and undergraduate and postgraduate student load and the outputs are undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD completions, national competitive and industry grants and publications. Using Malmquist indices, productivity growth is decomposed into technical efficiency and technological change. The results indicate that annual productivity growth averaged 3.3 percent across all universities, with a range between -1.8 percent and 13.0 percent, and was largely attributable to technological progress. However, separate analyses of research-only and teaching-only productivity indicate that most of this gain was attributable to improvements in research-only productivity associated with pure technical and some scale efficiency improvements. While teaching-only productivity also contributed, the largest source of gain in that instance was technological progress offset by a slight fall in technical efficiency.

The Index Number Problem with DEA: Insights from European University Efficiency Data

“…DEA applications within the higher education sector as a typical multi-input and multioutput production environment are numerous [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. In addition, the Malmquist index for analysing longitudinal developments over time [34][35][36] has also been applied for universities, e.g., for the Philippines [37] and Australia [38].…”

Research on Evaluation of Efficiency of Colleges and Universities’ Scientific Research in Hubei Province Based on Malmquist Index

“…Their research includes five evaluation indexes, involving 30 decisionmaking units, and the results showed that DEA is a feasible method in evaluating Universities' performance [2]. Another instance, Worthington,A.C(2008) use Malmquist Index study the varies of teaching efficiency of Australian universities between 1998 to 2003, the results show that the teaching efficiency of Australian university increased by 3.3% per year during this period on average [3]. K Chen and IS Chen (2011) using data envelopment analysis method to study the teaching performance of Taiwan colleges and universities, the results show that 73% of Taiwan's colleges and universities are in a relatively inactive state, the authors also have put forward measures to integrate innovation and reduce costs [4].…”

HBCU efficiency and endowments: An exploratory analysis

“…A comprehensive list of DEA applications to educational organizations is available in the International Handbook on the Economics of Education ( Johnes, 2004 ) , and an examination of DEA applications to schools at all levels can be found in the Handbook of Data Envelopment Analysis ( Cooper et al , 2004 ). A few examples of its use to evaluate institutions of higher education include ( Beasley, 1990( Beasley, , 1995( Beasley, , 2003Breu and Raab, 1994 ;Athanassopoulos and Shale, 1997 ;Avkiran, 2001 ;Korhonen et al , 2001 ;Abbott and Doucouliagos, ജ 2003 ;Casu and Thanassoulis, 2006 ;Glass et al , 2006 ;Worthington and Lee, 2008 ) .…”