Graduation Rates and Accountability: Regressions versus Production Frontiers

Robert Archibald () and David H Feldman ()
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Robert Archibald: Department of Economics, College of William and Mary

No 24, Working Papers from Department of Economics, College of William and Mary

Abstract: This paper suggests an alternative to the standard practice of measuring the graduation rate performance using regression analysis. The alternative is production frontier analysis. Production frontier analysis is appealing because it compares an institutions graduation rate to the best performance instead of the average performance. The paper explains the differences between these two types of analysis and provides examples of their application using data for 187 national universities.

Keywords: Efficiency frontiers; graduation rates; higher education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 C14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-01-10
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