Measuring the efficiency of universities: what is inside the black box?

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how internal characteristics of universities that reflect the structure of the budget and the makeup of the student body and academic staff influence the efficiency level of universities. We analyse a sample of 320 Russian public higher education institutions using the modern nonparametric methodology of an order-m conditional efficiency estimator. Our results suggest that the distribution of universities by efficiency scores may heavily depend on the aforementioned internal characteristics. The diversity of the academic staff, the student body and income sources positively affect the efficiency level, and so different policies and managerial practices aimed at increasing this diversity can be used as instruments for improving university efficiency and performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Universities
• efficiency
• performance
• order-m
• DEA

Acknowledgements

This paper is part of a research project implemented with the support of the Basic Research Program of the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2023.2209379.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) .