Best-practice benchmarking in UK higher education: new nonparametric approaches using financial ratios and profit efficiency methodologies

The neglected issue of using profit efficiency for the best-practice benchmarking of UK universities is explored to see whether this supports the policy stance of encouraging more specialized university production. The article also investigates whether nonparametric modelling with financial ratios,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inApplied economics Vol. 41; no. 2; pp. 249 - 267
Main Authors Colin Glass, J., McCallion, Gillian, McKillop, Donal G., Rasaratnam, Syamarlah, Stringer, Karl S.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London Routledge 01.01.2009
Taylor and Francis Journals
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Taylor & Francis (Routledge)
SeriesApplied Economics
Subjects
Benchmarking
Benchmarks
Best practice
Economic models
Economics of education
Education policy
Efficiency
Higher education
Studies
United Kingdom
United Kingdom > UK
Social Sciences & Humanities
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Summary:The neglected issue of using profit efficiency for the best-practice benchmarking of UK universities is explored to see whether this supports the policy stance of encouraging more specialized university production. The article also investigates whether nonparametric modelling with financial ratios, in contrast to nonparametric modelling based on the prices and quantities of each university's inputs and outputs, can yield ready insights into this profit efficiency issue. The empirical results, using two new approaches, confirm that more specialized university production yields relatively higher performance on average than less specialized production. The results also highlight certain advantages of financial ratios modelling.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
content type line 23
ISSN:0003-6846
1466-4283
DOI:10.1080/00036840600994278