Abstract
The concept of institutional performance can be regarded as embodying components on two dimensions: effectiveness, which is concerned with the congruence between outputs and goals or other criteria; and efficiency, which links outputs with inputs. The efficiency dimension, which has been relatively neglected in attempts to assess institutional performance, is defined, and its relationship to the economic concepts of efficiency and productivity is examined. The practical difficulties in assessment relate to the conceptualization and measurement of inputs and outputs in a manner reflecting an educational institution’s purposes and processes, and in a form which can be used as management information. This paper reviews the progress toward overcoming these difficulties and examines the ways that recent research addresses the analytical problems of assessing the input-output component of institutional performance. Studies of input-output relationships are classified into three categories: (1) input-output-ratio studies, which include the use of cost-analysis techniques and “productivity” ratios; (2) regression studies, which use statistical procedures to estimate the typical relationships among the variables; and (3) production frontier or data envelopment techniques, which identify and explore the most desirable input-output combinations or estimate the feasible range of these combinations.
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