The purpose of this paper is to briefly trace the evolution of DEA from the initial publication by Charnes et al. (1978b) to the current state of the art (SOA). The state of development of DEA is characterized at four points in time to provide a perspective in both directions—past and future. An evolution map is provided which illustrates DEA growth during the 17-year period, the timing of the major events, and the interconnections and influences between topics. An extensive DEA bibliography is provided.

Data envelopment analysis: The evolution of the state of the art (1978–1995)

Handbook of Quantitative Science and Technology Research

Educational institutions worldwide are increasingly the subject of analyses aimed at defining, measuring and improving efficiency. However, despite the importance of efficiency measurement in education, it is only relatively recently that the more advanced econometric and mathematical programming frontier techniques have been applied to primary and secondary schools, university departments and degree programmes, and universities as a whole. This paper attempts to provide a synoptic survey of the comparatively few empirical analyses in education using frontier efficiency measurement techniques. Both the measurement of inefficiency in education and the determinants of educational efficiency are examined.

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An Empirical Survey of Frontier Efficiency Measurement Techniques in Education

This paper provides an extensive overview of the literature on efficiency in education. It summarizes the earlier applied inputs, outputs and contextual variables, as well as the used data sources of papers in the field of efficiency in education. Moreover, it reviews the papers on education that applied methodologies as data envelopment analysis, Malmquist index, Bootstrapping, robust frontiers, metafrontier or stochastic frontier analysis. Based on the insights of the literature review, a second part of the paper provides some ways forward. It attempts to establish a link between the parametric ‘economics of education’ literature and the (semi-parametric) ‘efficiency in education literature’. We point to the similarities between matching and conditional efficiency; difference-in-differences and metafrontiers; and quantile regressions and partial frontiers. The paper concludes with some practical directions for prospective researchers in the field.

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Efficiency in education: a review of literature and a way forward

Measuring efficiency in the education sector is a highly complex task. One of the reasons is that the main resource of schools (the type of students they have) lie outside of their control, which means that it must be treated differently to other factors in analysis. This study examines the different options available in the literature for incorporating non-controllable inputs in a data envelopment analysis in order to determine the most appropriate model for evaluating schools. Our empirical study presents the results obtained using the model proposed by Fried et al . (1999), though we use bootstrap techniques to avoid problems of bias in the estimations.

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Measuring efficiency in education: an analysis of different approaches for incorporating non-discretionary inputs

The educational process is characterised by multiple outcomes such as the achievement of academic results of various standards and non-academic achievements. This paper shows how data envelopment analysis (DEA) can be used to guide secondary schools to improved performance through role-model identification and target setting in a way which recognises the multi-outcome nature of the education process and reflects the relative desirability of improving individual outcomes. The approach presented in the paper draws from a DEA-based assessment of the schools of a local education authority carried out by the authors. Data from that assessment are used to illustrate the approach presented in the paper. (Key words: Data envelopment analysis, education, target setting.)

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P. Dunstan

Papers

Guiding Schools to Improved Performance Using Data Envelopment Analysis: An Illustration with Data from a Local Education Authority