The Transient and Persistent Efficiency of Italian and German Universities: A Stochastic Frontier Analysis

Despite measures on the European level to increase the compatibility between the HE sectors of the member states, the recent literature exposes variations in their efficiencies. To gain insights into these differences we split the efficiency term according to the two management levels each university is confronted with. Utilizing a recent advancement in the method to measure efficiency, we separate short-term (transient) and long-term (persistent) efficiency, while controlling for unobserved institution specific heterogeneity. While the first term reflects the efficiency of the individual universities working within the country, the second term echoes the influence of the country specific overall HE structure. The cross-country comparison displays if the overall efficiency difference between countries is related to individual performance of their universities or their HE structure. This allows more purposeful policy recommendation and expands the literature regarding the efficiency of universities in a fundamental way. Choosing Italy and Germany as two important illustrative examples we can take advantage of a novel dataset including characteristics of institutions in both countries for an exceptional long period of time from 2001 to 2011. We show that the Italian universities exhibit a higher overall efficiency value than their German counterparts. With the individual universities working at the upper bound of efficiency in both countries, the overall inefficiency as well as the gap between the countries is caused by persistent, structural inefficiency. To expedite a true European Area of Higher Education future measures should hence aim at the country specific structure, not solely at affecting the activities of single universities

Inequality in education: can Italian disadvantaged students close the gap? A focus on resilience in the Italian school system

The relationship between socio-economic status and student achievement is well documented and a widespread literature indicates that students from more advantaged backgrounds perform better at school. Despite this relationship, several international assessments have highlighted that in each country there is a relevant proportion of “resilient students”, i.e. students who come from a disadvantaged socio-economic background but achieve relatively high levels of educational performance. In this paper, the determinants of resilience in the Italian educational system are investigated analysing data from the OECD-PISA 2009 edition, with a specific focus on the role of school-level variables that could help more students succeed. The aim is to target a specific category of resilient students, namely those who are characterised by a low socioeconomic background both at family level and at school level; therefore a novel statistical procedure is proposed to derive a sample of disadvantaged students who attend disadvantaged schools. Afterwards a multilevel logistic approach is adopted to determine which characteristics of students, families and schools, tend to give disadvantaged students a higher probability of becoming a resilient. Our results confirm that not only individual-level characteristics, but also some school factors (i.e. extracurricular activities and school leadership) play a role in this direction, suggesting policy and managerial implications

Cross-Country Efficiency Comparison between Italian and Spanish Public Universities in the period 2000-2005

The growing internationalization of European Higher Education requires more emphasis on crosscountry comparisons. In this paper, an efficiency analysis of Italian and Spanish universities is conducted; as well as from a comparative perspective. The efficiency scores are obtained using Data Envelopment Analysis. The results demonstrate a good average efficiency in both countries relative to each “countryspecific” frontier; but when compared together, Italian universities seem relatively more efficient. Malmquist indexes show, in both cases, efficiency improvements in the period considered. In the Italian case, this improvement is due to major “technological changes”; that is, the introduction of some structural reforms in the sector (e.g. Bachelor/Master curricula). In the Spanish case, there is an improvement in “pure” efficiency, which is due to new funding models. Further stages of the study underline the role of “regional effects”, probably due to different socio-economic conditions in Italy, and to the decentralization process in Spain

Are we wasting public money? No! The effects of grants on Italian university students’ performances

In this paper, we estimate the effect of receiving a financial aid for a cohort of students who enrolled at Politecnico di Milano (Italy) in the year 2007/08, through a Propensity Score Matching approach. Using administrative data about these students for four years, we were able to evaluate the impact of the financial aid on several dimensions of academic performance: formative credits obtained after one year, drop-out probability in the first and second year, graduation in the legal duration of the course, and graduation after four years. Overall, we find a positive and statistically significant effect of the grant; this finding is stable across several robustness checks. Exploring the heterogeneity of this effect, we demonstrate that this latter is higher for immigrants, Italians who moved from another region for studying, and students attending an Engineering course. We also find evidence that unobservable factors (such as students’ own intrinsic academic motivation) account for an important part of the estimated impact of the financial aid

Cost Structure, Efficiency and Heterogeneity in US Higher Education: An Empirical Analysis

We estimate a variety of models to evaluate costs in US higher education institutions. A novel feature of our approach involves the estimation of latent class and random parameter stochastic frontier models of the multiproduct cost function. This allows us fully to accommodate both the heterogeneity of institutions and the presence of technical inefficiencies. Our findings suggest that global economies could be achieved by effecting a reduction in the number of institutions providing undergraduate instruction, while increasing the number of institutions engaged in postgraduate activity

Student and School Performance Across Countries:a Machine Learning Approach

In this paper, we develop and apply novel machine learning and statistical methods to analyse the determinants of students' PISA 2015 test scores in nine countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, UK and USA. The aim is to find out which student characteristics are associated with test scores and which school characteristics are associated to school value-added (measured at school level). A specific aim of our approach is to explore non-linearities in the associations between covariates and test scores, as well as to model interactions between school-level factors in affecting results. In order to address these issues, we apply a two-stage methodology using flexible tree-based methods. We first run multilevel regression trees in the first stage, to estimate school value-added. In the second stage, we relate the estimated school value- added to school level variables by means of regression trees and boosting. Results show that while several student and school level characteristics are significantly associated to students' achievements, there are marked differences across countries. The proposed approach allows an improved description of the structurally different educational production functions across countries

The effect of ICT on schools’ efficiency: Empirical evidence on 23 European countries

In the last two decades, ICT use in schools grew exponentially. In this paper, the relationship between ICT and school’s efficiency and the mechanisms through which ICT can enhance schools’ productivity are investigated, using PISA 2018 data for about 5400 schools. Empirically, we analyze school’s efficiency in producing ICT-mediated instructional time as well as final educational output, by implementing a network Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model. The analysis is complemented by a conditional DEA to account for the presence of possible external drivers of schools’ efficiency. Results show that the average schools’ efficiency in using ICT is relatively low, and that it is mainly driven by the ability of translating ICT-mediated instructional time into learning, rather than by the amount of ICT and human resources. This evidence is consistent across countries. By investigating the role of ICT in schools’ efficiency the paper provides insights to guide the transition of digital technology into learning

Poverty measures to analyse the educational inequality in the OECD Countries

This paper studies the degree of educational poverty in OECD countries on the basis of last edition (2015) of OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The definition of 'poor in education', in terms of PISA data, refers to the students below the baseline level of proficiency that is required to participate fully in society. We adopt both one-dimensional and multidimensional approach to measure poverty in education. In this light, the educational poverty is analysed by the poverty metrics developed by Foster, Greer and Thorbecke and those proposed by Alkire and Foster. The main results of our analysis provide a detailed picture of the degree of poverty relative to student learning in OECD countries, and they can be considered an analytical tool to improve the quality of educational systems

Cost Structure, Efficiency and Heterogeneity in US Higher Education: An Empirical Analysis

We estimate a variety of models to evaluate costs in US higher education institutions. A novel feature of our approach involves the estimation of latent class and random parameter stochastic frontier models of the multiproduct cost function. This allows us fully to accommodate both the heterogeneity of institutions and the presence of technical inefficiencies. Our findings suggest that global economies could be achieved by effecting a reduction in the number of institutions providing undergraduate instruction, while increasing the number of institutions engaged in postgraduate activity.

Efficiency of investment in compulsory education: empirical analyses in Europe

The current economic crisis has put ever more to the forefront the need to achieve educational goals in the most efficient way. Therefore, this report provides an empirical analysis of the efficiency in education in the EU. Efficiency is measured first by using two different but related traditional frontier approaches (Data Envelopment Analysis and Free Disposal Hull) and then the robustness of our findings is checked by means of multi-criteria evaluation. The analysis is based on a number of standard variables from the literature. The results show, among others, that not the amount, but the specific use of resources is what matters; and that the efficiency of an educational system could also contribute to long-term benefits in terms of adults’ skills and competences.JRC.B.4-Human Capital and Employmen