324700_Print.indd

economic status of their located province, but not strongly positive, demonstrating

that research efficiency in universities was not purely influenced by regional

economy. Han and Li ( 2010 ) took the features of different disciplines as reference

for classification, and calculated the research efficiency scores of Humanity and

Social Sciences (HSS) of 11 Chinese universities. They found that 5 out of 11

universities were operating relatively well in the aspects of technical efficiency and

scale efficiency, while other 6 universities were DEA-inefficient. This paper is the

veryfirst one to conduct efficiency and productivity analysis of HSS research from

the perspective of discipline, which considerably enlightens further studies. Hu

et al. ( 2011 ) applied DEA to evaluate research efficiency of 985Us, and found that

most of 985Us were in the state of low efficiency.

Table 2.1 (continued)

Authors Sample Inputs Outputs Findings

Madden et al.

( 1997 )

24

departments

(economics)

in Australian

universities

Academic staff;

Non-academic

staff

Undergraduates;

postgraduates;

core journals;

other journals;

books; Books;

Edited books

Overall

performance has

improved

substantially,

further

productivity

improvements are

required for new

universities to

achieve best

practice

Avkiran ( 2001 )36

Australian

universities

FTE academic

staff;

FTE

non-academic

staff

FTE

undergraduates;

FTE

postgraduates;

Research

quantum; Student

retention\progress

rate; Graduate

full-time

employment rate;

Overseas

fee-paying

enrollments;

Non-overseas

fee-paying

postgraduates

University sector

performed well on

technical and

scale efficiency

but there was

room for

improving

performance on

fee-paying

enrollments. More

universities were

operating at

decreasing returns

to scale

Abramo et al.

( 2008 )

Italian

university

system

Research

personnel by

level;

Extra funding

Publication

quantity;

Publication

quality;

Level of

contribution to

scientific

publications

There were big

differences among

different

disciplines with

significance

2.4 Empirical Studies in Evaluating University... 21