Data Envelopment Analysis for the efficiency of Academic departments

• Author: Duguleana L., Duguleana C.
• Pages: 453-468

Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov

Series V: Economic Sciences • Vol. 8 (57) No. 2 - 2015

Data Envelopment Analysis for

the efficiency of Academic Departments

Liliana DUGULEANĂ1, Constantin DUGULEANĂ2

Abstract: Efficiency in the higher education system has become important as regards the

sizing and shaping of the inputs according the the outputs to be achieved. At institutional

level, the university is interested mostly in the efficiency of its organizational structures:

faculties and the academic departments. This study is using Data Envelopment Analysis

(DEA) – a management tool, to identify the relative technical efficiency of academic

departments at Transilvania University during the academic year 2014-2015. Two types of

software offer the same results, yet differently presented. The ranking of the most efficient

departments allow identification of the well organized departments and faculties of the

University. New input and new output variables are used to evaluate technical efficiency of

academic departments face to the already used variables in all the previous published

studies. The input and output variables were selected in order to characterize the two

directions: academic and scientific research. The results of DEA model offer useful basis, for

university leading staff, in the action of improving the efficiency of academic management.

Key-words: efficiency, academic departments, Data Envelopment Analysis

1. Introduction

The financing policies of the Romanian higher education system impose for Higher

Education Institutions (HEIs) to apply quality and performance management within their

own structures. The strategic management in HEIs must be based on the efficiency

analyses of the academic departments, as main units of teaching and research. The

purpose of this study is to evaluate the technical efficiency of the departments of

Transilvania University of Braşov, during the academic year 2014-2015.

The main tool - Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) - was applied for each

academic year in order to offer images of relative efficiency of departments at

Transilvania University level. The obtained results offer rankings of departments

related to their efficiency and allow some conclusions about the dynamics of

performance management of University leading staff.

1 Transilvania University of Braşov, ldugul@unitbv.ro

2 Transilvania University of Braşov, cduguleana@unitbv.ro

Liliana DUGULEANĂ, Constantin DUGULEANĂ

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DEA analyses were performed using two types of software: OSDEA – a free

Open Source Data Envelopment Analysis solver (http://gplv3.fsf.org/), developed by

Juergen Ebert and Mark James, and EMS – Efficiency Measurement System,

product of Holger Scheel (2000) and Csaba Meszaros [7].

2. DEA Methodology

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a method used for measuring the relative

efficiency of a certain number of producers called decision making units, DMUs,

being a set of comparable units.

Each producer (DMU) has inputs (X) and outputs (Y). Seeing a DMU as a

cybernetic system, its feed-back represents the management process and the

efficiency of this process is a function depending on inputs and outputs.

The collected data are the inputs and the outputs for all producers, as

presented in Figure 1.

Inputs, X Outputs, Y

X(A) DMU 1: A Y(A)

X(B) Y(B)

DMU 2: B

composite . composite

inputs . outputs

.

.

X(<n>) Y(<n>)

DMU n: <...>

Fig. 1. Organizational structures at institutional level

Instead of evaluating DMUs’ efficiencies relative to their average level, in a

traditional approach, DEA is a non-parametric technique which considers the

position of each DMU compared with that of a given producer, in this case, an

extreme point, which is the “best” DMU.