Colombian higher education institutions evaluation

Abstract

Over the last twenty years, access to higher education has grown extraordinarily in Latin America. Higher education systems have been challenged to improve their efficiency while strengthening quality assurance processes. In Colombia, the government and the researchers developed models to assess the performance of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Nevertheless, the current scholarship does not have a model that allows the system to measure multiple efficiencies in a diverse environment. In this study, we address the challenge of evaluating the efficiency of HEIs taking into account different goals of the Colombian education system. To this aim, we extend a cross-efficiency data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach to evaluate the efficiency of Colombian HEIs in the presence of flexible measures. While some HEIs are efficient in terms of teaching or employment, others are efficient in terms of research. Therefore, the model suggests broader policies to achieve the efficiency of the institutions under multiple goals.