Ranking and clustering of the faculties of commerce research performance in Australia

Abstract

There is a growing policy focus in Australian higher education on quantitative research performance assessment. However, most of the analysis has addressed aggregate performance at the institutional level, an approach inconsistent with recent policy emphasis on diversity among universities and one that ignores performance variations across disciplines. Using averaged and all available data for 2000–2004, cluster analysis is used to classify Australian Commerce Faculties into groups that exhibit similar research performance, measured by publication, PhD completion and secured competitive research grant funding. We also use factor analysis to generate full-multidimensional rankings within the resulting two or three clusters. It is found that in terms of total research output, with the exception of Adelaide all the Group of 8 (Go8) members plus University of Technology, Sydney and Griffith always belong to ‘Clusters A’. However, when research performance is expressed in per academic staff terms, an additional 11 universities join this same cluster. Our results additionally show that eight Australian faculties of Commerce not only possess low total research output but their per capita performance is also poor.

Acknowledgements

We wish to acknowledge Professor Mark Taylor and two anonymous referees whose constructive inputs and comments considerably improved an earlier version of this article. The usual caveat applies.

Notes

¹ DEA, first introduced by Charnes et al. (1978), is a performance measurement technique, which has been widely used for evaluating the relative efficiency of decision-making units including higher education institutions.

² The Go8 consists of The Australian National University, Monash University, The University of Adelaide, The University of Melbourne, The University of New South Wales (UNSW), The University of Queensland, The University of Sydney and The University of Western Australia.

³ According to the DEST, these 10 broad fields of education are: natural and physical sciences; information technology; engineering and related technologies; architecture and building; agriculture, environmental and related studies; health; education; management and commerce; society and culture and creative arts. Commerce includes disciplines such as economics, management, marketing, accounting, finance, business and other related disciplines.

⁴ There are also small exceptions on the margin for Deakin, Western Sydney and Curtin.