In recent years, the management environment of Korean universities has changed rapidly to gain more competitiveness. Leading universities, already having established a good reputation, will survive and grow continuously, whilst average universities ma...
In recent years, the management environment of Korean universities has changed rapidly to gain more competitiveness. Leading universities, already having established a good reputation, will survive and grow continuously, whilst average universities may experience a serious crisis if not attending to the needs of the university. To promote a universitys efficiency or management, we will need more accurate methods such as the DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) to identify the inefficient parts.
This study has examined DEA and how it measures the efficiency of university units. This study has also suggested various approaches to promote efficiency.
Data Envelopment Analysis is a useful nonparametric method to evaluate the relative efficiency of a set of decision-making units (DMUs) with multiple inputs and outputs.
This study has evaluated 38 different Korean universities utilizing the National Citation Report (NCR) focusing on the years between 1995 and 2003. The NCR states that each of these Korean universities had published over 500 works between the years of 1995-2003.
Among the various types of DEA models, this study mainly uses the CCR (Charnes, Cooper & Rhodes) model, which aligns inputs and outputs simultaneously. In this model, the input factors are the following: university employees (faculty and staff), salary, internal research expenses, and the library. The resulting output factors are the citations in international citation indexes, published works including journal articles and essays written by professors and their graduate students, external research expenses, impact factors of dissertations and the overall reputation gained by the university.
The outcome of this evaluation is as follows: Out of 38 universities, are the 19 efficient units i.e efficient universities (the value of efficiency is 100%). For the inefficient units of a university, we research methods for improving the DEA efficiency. These suggestions are based on data derived from the following factors: peer group, actual value, target value, slack input achieved, output achieved. These data are acquired by running DEA software (Banxia Software Ltd.)
This study can provide substantial guidance for enhancing the competitiveness between universities, through identifying problematic areas within the input factors and, by doing so, improving the output factors. Although this study may lack some research design, the overall results can contribute to the improvement of efficiency and competitiveness of Korean universities.