Operational Research in Education

Operational Research (OR) techniques have been applied, from the early stages of the discipline, to a wide variety of issues in education. At the government level, these include questions of what resources should be allocated to education as a whole and how these should be divided amongst the individual sectors of education and the institutions within the sectors. Another pertinent issue concerns the efficient operation of institutions, how to measure it, and whether resource allocation can be used to incentivise efficiency savings. Local governments, as well as being concerned with issues of resource allocation, may also need to make decisions regarding, for example, the creation and location of new institutions or closure of existing ones, as well as the day-to-day logistics of getting pupils to schools. Issues of concern for managers within schools and colleges include allocating the budgets, scheduling lessons and the assignment of students to courses. This survey provides an overview of the diverse problems faced by government, managers and consumers of education, and the OR techniques which have typically been applied in an effort to improve operations and provide solutions

COOPER-framework: A Unified Standard Process for Non-parametric Projects

Practitioners assess performance of entities in increasingly large and complicated datasets. If non-parametric models, such as Data Envelopment Analysis, were ever considered as simple push-button technologies, this is impossible when many variables are available or when data have to be compiled from several sources. This paper introduces by the ‘COOPER-framework’ a comprehensive model for carrying out non-parametric projects. The framework consists of six interrelated phases: Concepts and objectives, On structuring data, Operational models, Performance comparison model, Evaluation, and Result and deployment. Each of the phases describes some necessary steps a researcher should examine for a well defined and repeatable analysis. The COOPER-framework provides for the novice analyst guidance, structure and advice for a sound non-parametric analysis. The more experienced analyst benefits from a check list such that important issues are not forgotten. In addition, by the use of a standardized framework non-parametric assessments will be more reliable, more repeatable, more manageable, faster and less costly.DEA, non-parametric efficiency, unified standard process, COOPER-framework.

Study on the efficiency and effectiveness of public spending on tertiary education

The purpose of the study is to assess efficiency in public tertiary education systems across EU countries plus Japan and the US with semi-parametric methods and stochastic frontier analysis.  The study identifies a core group of efficient countries. A good quality secondary system, output-based funding rules, institutions' independent evaluation and staff policy autonomy are positively related to efficiency.  Moreover, the study provides evidence that public spending on tertiary education is more effective in what concerns labour productivity growth and employability when it is coupled with efficiency.Efficiency, effectiveness, public spending, tertiary education, Universities, Study on the efficiency and effectiveness of public spending on tertiary education

An application of statistical interference in DEA models: An analysis of public owned university departments' efficiency

This paper uses Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model formulations in order to determine the performance levels of 16 departments of the University of Thessaly. Particularly, the constant returns to scale (CRS) and variable returns to scale (VRS) models have been applied alongside with bootstrap techniques in order to determine accurate performance measurements of the 16 departments. The study illustrates how the recent developments in efficiency analysis and statistical inference can be applied when evaluating institutional performance issues. The paper provides the efficient departments and the target values which need to be adopted from the inefficient departments in order to operate in the most productive scale size (MPSS). Moreover it provides bias corrected estimates alongside with their confidence intervals. The analysis indicates that there are strong inefficiencies among the departments, emphasizing the misallocation of resources or/and inefficient application of departments policy developments.University efficiency; DEA; Bootstrap techniques; Kernel density estimation, Economic research; Europe; University rankings.

Some university students are more equal than others: Evidence from England

This paper estimates the efficiency of students in English universities using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and a new dataset which is able to capture the behaviour of university students. Taking as the output the classification of a university degree, we use as inputs teaching hours and quality, entry qualifications, and the effort level. We find that university students differ in terms of the efficiency with which they use inputs in producing good degrees. In a second stage, we explore the determinants of the efficiency of university students using a truncated regression model. Higher student efficiency is found to be positively and significantly related to university size, and negatively and significantly related to the proportion of part-time students and the number of academic staff. The quality of a university has no significant impact on the efficiency of its students once endogeneity of university quality is controlled for.

Higher education institutions' costs and efficiency: taking the decomposition a further step

A multiproduct cost function is estimated for English higher education institutions using a panel of data from recent years. The panel approach allows estimation by means of a random parameter stochastic frontier model which provides considerable new insights in that it allows the impact on costs of inter-institutional differences in the cost function itself to be distinguished from inter-institutional differences in efficiency. The approach used here therefore resembles in some respects the non-parametric methods of efficiency evaluation. We report also on measures of average incremental cost of provision and on returns to scale and scope.

Assessing the Relative Performance of U.K. University Technology Transfer Offices: Parametric and Non-Parametric Evidence

We present evidence on the relative efficiency of U.K. university technology transfer offices (TTOs) using data envelopment analysis (DEA) and stochastic frontier estimation (SFE). We find that U.K. TTOs exhibit low levels of absolute efficiency. Universities located in regions with higher levels of R&D and GDP appear to be more efficient in technology transfer, implying that there may be regional spillovers in technology transfer. Our results suggest that TTOs may need to be reconfigured into smaller units, since there may be scope for the development of regionally-based, sector focused TTOs. Consistent with qualitative evidence from U.S. TTOs (e.g., Siegel et al. (2003a, b, c)), we find that there may be a need to enhance the skills and capabilities of U.K. TTO managers and licensing professionals.

Measuring the Efficiency and Productivity of British Universities: An Application of DEA and the Malmquist Approach

This paper uses data envelopment analysis to examine the technical efficiency (TE) of 45 British universities in the period 1980/81 to 1992/93. This period was chosen primarily because it was characterized by major changes in public funding and in student : staff ratios. To shed light on the causes of variations in efficiency, TE is decomposed into pure technical efficiency (PTE), congestion efficiency (CE) and scale efficiency (SE). The analysis indicates that there was a substantial rise in the weighted geometric mean TE score during the study period, although this rise was most noticeable between 1987/88 and 1990/91. The rising TE scores are attributed largely to the gains in PTE and CE, with SE playing a minor role. The Malmquist approach is then used to distinguish between changes in technical efficiency and intertemporal shifts in the efficiency frontier. The results reveal that total factor productivity rose by 51.5% between 1980/81 and 1992/93, and that most of this increase was due to a substantial outward shift in the efficiency frontier during this period.Efficiency; Productivity; Universities; DEA; Malmquist

Analysing the Research and Teaching Quality Achievement Frontier

The paper analyses the nature of the achievement possibility frontier between research and teaching quality in higher education under a system of quality evaluation by reference to discrete quality grades. It finds several important reasons why the associated feasible set is likely to be non-convex, and hence where the assumptions of the widely used nonparametric frontier performance analysis technique of Data Envelopment Analysis are no longer valid. The paper therefore investigates the use of the alternative Free Disposal Hull technique, and compares the results of deploying these techniques to the performance evaluation of UK Departments of Economics.Research and teaching quality, Higher education, Departments of Economics, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), Free Disposal Hull