IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/unm/umaror/2014006.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Money counts for a Times Higher Education top-rank

Author

Listed:
  • Marconi, G.

    (Organisation,Strategy & Entrepreneurship)

  • Ritzen, J.M.M.

    (Maastricht Graduate School of Governance, RS: UNU-MERIT Theme 3, RS: FSE MGSoG)

Abstract

This paper analyses the relationship between a university’s expenditure per student and its position in international university rankings. We take into account other factors that are expected to play a role, such as university mission, size, and productive inefficiency. We formalise these concepts in our theoretical model of rankings and universities, and estimate this model with data on universities classified in the top 200 by the Times Higher Education Supplement ranking of 2007. We find that the elasticity of a university’s ranking score for the expenditure per student is equal to 8.9%, and that there are no clear signs of inefficiency in production among these universities. University mission and size are also significant predictors of ranking score. These results are important in view of the relevance attributed to rankings by government officials, university directors and students.

Suggested Citation

  • Marconi, G. & Ritzen, J.M.M., 2014. "Money counts for a Times Higher Education top-rank," ROA Research Memorandum 006, Maastricht University, Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA).
    • Handle: RePEc:unm:umaror:2014006
    DOI: 10.26481/umaror.2014006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cris.maastrichtuniversity.nl/ws/files/1313650/guid-07ed2bc9-0872-4638-a43e-0db881eb590e-ASSET1.0.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.26481/umaror.2014006?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Eric Hanushek & Ludger Woessmann, 2012. "Do better schools lead to more growth? Cognitive skills, economic outcomes, and causation," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 17(4), pages 267-321, December.
    2. Fernandez C. & Koop G. & Steel M.F.J., 2002. "Multiple-Output Production With Undesirable Outputs: An Application to Nitrogen Surplus in Agriculture," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 97, pages 432-442, June.
    3. Fernandez, Carmen & Koop, Gary & Steel, Mark, 2000. "A Bayesian analysis of multiple-output production frontiers," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 98(1), pages 47-79, September.
    4. Fried, Harold O. & Lovell, C. A. Knox & Schmidt, Shelton S. (ed.), 2008. "The Measurement of Productive Efficiency and Productivity Growth," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195183528.
    5. Philippe Aghion & Mathias Dewatripont & Caroline Hoxby & Andreu Mas-Colell & André Sapir, 2010. "The governance and performance of universities: evidence from Europe and the US [Distance to frontier, selection, and economic growth]," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 25(61), pages 7-59.
    6. Ivo J. M. Arnold, 2008. "Course Level and the Relationship between Research Productivity and Teaching Effectiveness," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(4), pages 307-321, September.
    7. Kuo, Jenn-Shyong & Ho, Yi-Cheng, 2008. "The cost efficiency impact of the university operation fund on public universities in Taiwan," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 27(5), pages 603-612, October.
    8. Johnes, Jill, 2006. "Data envelopment analysis and its application to the measurement of efficiency in higher education," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 273-288, June.
    9. Saisana, Michaela & d'Hombres, Béatrice & Saltelli, Andrea, 2011. "Rickety numbers: Volatility of university rankings and policy implications," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 165-177, February.
    10. Izadi, Hooshang & Johnes, Geraint & Oskrochi, Reza & Crouchley, Robert, 2002. "Stochastic frontier estimation of a CES cost function: the case of higher education in Britain," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 63-71, February.
    11. Cyrenne, Philippe & Grant, Hugh, 2009. "University decision making and prestige: An empirical study," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 237-248, April.
    12. Johnes, Geraint & Johnes, Jill, 2009. "Higher education institutions' costs and efficiency: Taking the decomposition a further step," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 107-113, February.
    13. Gabriele Marconi, 2013. "Rankings, accreditations, and international exchange students," IZA Journal of European Labor Studies, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 2(1), pages 1-22, December.
    14. Aigner, Dennis & Lovell, C. A. Knox & Schmidt, Peter, 1977. "Formulation and estimation of stochastic frontier production function models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(1), pages 21-37, July.
    15. Longlong, Hou & Fengliang, Li & Weifang, Min, 2009. "Multi-product total cost functions for higher education: The case of Chinese research universities," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 505-511, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gralka, Sabine, 2018. "Stochastic frontier analysis in higher education: A systematic review," CEPIE Working Papers 05/18, Technische Universität Dresden, Center of Public and International Economics (CEPIE).
    2. Kristof De Witte & Laura López-Torres, 2017. "Efficiency in education: a review of literature and a way forward," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 68(4), pages 339-363, April.
    3. Orosco Gavilán, Juan Carlos, 2023. "Measuring efficiency of Peruvian universities: a stochastic frontier analysis," DES - Working Papers. Statistics and Econometrics. WS 36250, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Estadística.
    4. Mehdi Rhaiem, 2017. "Measurement and determinants of academic research efficiency: a systematic review of the evidence," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 110(2), pages 581-615, February.
    5. Javier García-Estévez & Néstor Duch-Brown, 2012. "Student graduation: to what extent does university expenditure matter?," Working Papers 2012/4, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    6. Laureti, Tiziana & Secondi, Luca & Biggeri, Luigi, 2014. "Measuring the efficiency of teaching activities in Italian universities: An information theoretic approach," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 147-164.
    7. Calogero Guccio & Marco Ferdinando Martorana & Luisa Monaco, 2016. "Evaluating the impact of the Bologna Process on the efficiency convergence of Italian universities: a non-parametric frontier approach," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 45(3), pages 275-298, June.
    8. Vanesa D’Elia & Gustavo Ferro, 2019. "Empirical Efficiency Measurement in Higher Education: An Overview," CEMA Working Papers: Serie Documentos de Trabajo. 708, Universidad del CEMA.
    9. Shukhrat Kholmuminov & Robert E Wright, 2017. "Cost efficiency analysis of public higher education institutions in Uzbekistan," Working Papers 1704, University of Strathclyde Business School, Department of Economics.
    10. Ruiz, José L. & Segura, José V. & Sirvent, Inmaculada, 2015. "Benchmarking and target setting with expert preferences: An application to the evaluation of educational performance of Spanish universities," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 242(2), pages 594-605.
    11. G. Thomas Sav, 2012. "Stochastic Cost Inefficiency Estimates and Rankings of Public and Private Research and Doctoral Granting Universities," Journal of Knowledge Management, Economics and Information Technology, ScientificPapers.org, vol. 2(3), pages 1-13, June.
    12. Javier García-Estévez & Néstor Duch-Brown, 2012. "Student graduation: to what extent does university expenditure matter?," Working Papers 2012/4, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    13. Marvin A. Titus & Adriana Vamosiu & Kevin R. McClure, 2017. "Are Public Master’s Institutions Cost Efficient? A Stochastic Frontier and Spatial Analysis," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 58(5), pages 469-496, August.
    14. Bolli, Thomas & Olivares, Maria & Bonaccorsi, Andrea & Daraio, Cinzia & Aracil, Adela Garcia & Lepori, Benedetto, 2016. "The differential effects of competitive funding on the production frontier and the efficiency of universities," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 91-104.
    15. Mehdi Rhaiem & Nabil Amara, 2020. "Determinants of research efficiency in Canadian business schools: evidence from scholar-level data," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(1), pages 53-99, October.
    16. Efthymios G. Tsionas, 2006. "Inference in dynamic stochastic frontier models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(5), pages 669-676, July.
    17. Sabine Gralka, 2018. "Persistent inefficiency in the higher education sector: evidence from Germany," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(4), pages 373-392, July.
    18. Ferreira, Jose T.A.S. & Steel, Mark F.J., 2007. "Model comparison of coordinate-free multivariate skewed distributions with an application to stochastic frontiers," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 137(2), pages 641-673, April.
    19. Liang-Cheng Zhang & Andrew C. Worthington, 2018. "Explaining Estimated Economies of Scale and Scope in Higher Education: A Meta-Regression Analysis," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 59(2), pages 156-173, March.
    20. Andrea Bonaccorsi & Cinzia Daraio & Leopold Simar, 2014. "Efficiency and economies of scale and scope in European universities. A directional distance approach," DIAG Technical Reports 2014-08, Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering, Universita' degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza".

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C51 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Model Construction and Estimation
    • D20 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - General
    • F23 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - Multinational Firms; International Business
    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:unm:umaror:2014006. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Andrea Willems or Leonne Portz (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/romaanl.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.