Un analisi empirica dei percorsi formativi degli studenti universitari: il caso dell‟Università degli studi di Salerno

2010 - 2011Il lavoro presenta uno studio di alcuni aspetti del sistema universitario in Italia sia attraverso un’analisi normativa, evidenziando il riconoscimento di un certo grado di autonomia alle università (in particolare didattica, scientifica, organizzativa, finanziaria e contabile) e la costruzione di un sistema di valutazione delle stesse, che attraverso un’analisi empirica dei percorsi formativi degli studenti, avente come oggetto gli immatricolati ai corsi di laurea del nuovo ordinamento (post-riforma) dell’Università di Salerno, allo scopo di esaminare principalmente i parametri e gli indicatori che sono stati utilizzati per valutare le performances degli atenei. [a cura dell'autore]X n.s

Regional innovation system (in)efficiency and its determinants: an empirical evidence from Italian regions

This paper investigates the regional innovation system (RIS) efficiency, and its determinants, in Italy through a Stochastic Frontier Analysis and using the concept of a knowledge production function. The contribution of universities’, private and public sectors’ resources devoted to research and development (R&D), in generating innovation, has been examined, as well as the impact of several exogenous environmental variables on RIS efficiency. The empirical findings suggest the importance of R&D investments taking place in the universities and in the private sector, which benefit the most to regional innovation activities; labour market and industries’ characteristics are found to have an important role on RIS efficiency

Handling negative data using Data Envelopment Analysis: a directional distance approach applied to higher education

This paper applies a data envelopment analysis (DEA) method to assess technical efficiency of both private and public universities in Italy. Moving from the traditional context where inputs and outputs are assumed to be non-negative, a directional distance function approach has been applied in order to handle both desirable (i.e. number of graduates) and undesirable (i.e. number of dropouts) outputs. The findings based on a panel from academic year 2003/2004 to 2007/2008 reveal the presence of interesting geographical (both by macro areas and regions) and ownership (private, public) effects. Several quality and quantity proxies have also been used in order to check whether the estimates depend on the output specification. Finally, the possible evidence of variation in the universities’ performances by subject of study has been taken into account in order to check whether the results are still consistent comparing universities within subject rather than across subjects

How students' exogenous characteristics affect faculties’ inefficiency. A heteroscedastic stochastic frontier approach

By using a heteroscedastic stochastic frontier model, this paper focuses on how students' exogenous characteristics (such as personal demographic information, pre-enrollment educational background and household economic status) affect faculties’ inefficiency. Using individual data on freshmen enrolled at a public owned university in Italy over the 2002-2008 period, we focus both on the direction of this influence on technical inefficiency and on the magnitude of the related partial effects. A measure of R2 has also been calculated in order to evaluate the overall explanatory power of the exogenous variables used. The empirical evidence reveals the validity of the heteroscedastic assumption, giving credit to the use of some students’ individual characteristics according to which the inefficiency is allowed to change. Moreover, the estimates suggest that the university could improve the students’ performances by investing in labour inputs