Convexity, Quality and Efficiency in Education

David Mayston ()

Discussion Papers from Department of Economics, University of York

Abstract: While Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has many attractions as a technique for analysing the efficiency of educational organisations, such as schools and universities, its efficiency estimates are based upon the assumption that the output possibility set is convex. If this assumption does not hold, DEA may overstate the scope for improvements in technical efficiency through proportional increases in all educational outputs and understate the importance of improvements in allocative efficiency from changing the educational output mix. The paper therefore examines conditions under which such convexity may not hold, particularly when the performance and efficiency evaluation includes measures related to the assessed quality of the educational outputs, and the position of the school or university in national league tables. Under such conditions, there is a need to deploy other educational efficiency assessment tools, including an alternative non-parametric output-orientated technique and a more explicit valuation function for educational outputs.

Keywords: Data envelopment analysis; quality; education; efficiency analysis; allocative efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C61 D61 H52 I20 I23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-eff
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Journal Article: Convexity, quality and efficiency in education (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:yor:yorken:15/08

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