Scholarly record

DEA APPROACH TO EFFICIENCY ASSESSMENT OF PUBLIC SPENDING ON TERTIARY EDUCATION

R. Drab, K. Kocisova

Abstract

During the last years the tertiary education support is growing mainly due to researches that claim it can foster the development of individuals and so the economy as a whole. This growth is creating a significant pressure on countries’ public budgets, as the main source of support, and the effectiveness of its allocation. This paper deals with the evaluation of public spending on education efficiency, with an emphasis on tertiary education in EU countries. It is devoted mainly on economic aspects of education, emphasizes the role of a human capital and describes the efficiency as an important tool for international comparison. Given the increasing economic importance of tertiary education, the need for efficiency measurement of the public spending on education and the need to ensure greater effectiveness of public spending, the main objective of the paper is, on the basis of the measurement’s theoretical definition, to analyse and compare the efficiency of public spending in the area of tertiary education in the period 2000 – 2013. In order to identify the inefficiency and areas of possible efficiency increase in the EU countries a data envelopment analysis (DEA) was performed. To achieve the paper objectives, non-parametric DEA method and general research methods were applied. To assess and compare the EU education systems so called performance indicators were used. For measurement of the technical efficiency a BCC model with two sets of inputs and one set of outputs was applied. Data for the analysis were gathered from OECD, Eurostat, AMECO and SJR databases.

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