Abstract:

The proposed research project Higher Education Global Efficiency Analysis“ (HELENA) aims at a global efficiency benchmarking study addressing higher education institutions. Today global rankings for universities exist consisting mainly out of cumulated outcome measurements – and neglecting efficiency questions. As in most countries also in Germany the main source for higher education funding is tax-based state funding. Therefore, an increasing interest is put towards a productivity – or synonymously used: an efficiency – perspective in university management by comparing resource inputs and outcomes of higher education activities. Several obvious hypotheses exist in this field, e.g. private universities should be more efficient than state universities. But also non-mainstream hypotheses can be found as for example research results of the authors showing diseconomies of scale in universities for teaching as well as for research. Therefore a global benchmarking effort seems to promise new insights in the efficiency of higher education institutions compared with formerly international ranking systems as e.g. the Shanghai Jao-Tong University Ranking. Therefore a research group is suggested to be established at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Institute for Production and Industrial Information Management. Das