Chapter 5
Dynamic Evaluation on Research
Productivity of“211 Project”Universities:
The DEA-Malmquist Approach
In theory, the improvement of university research level and capability is mainly
attributable to two parts: increasing the investment of research inputs, and
improving research productivity. Currently, Chinese universities, especially those
“211 Project”universities (henceforth 211Us) aiming for building high-level uni-
versities, have received tremendous amount of research funding from central and
local governments and social organizations, and have attracted and gathered lots of
high-level researchers from both home and abroad with the support of some
national talent programs such as Global Experts,
1
Chang Jiang Scholars
2
and so on.
At the same time, these universities also have made great achievements in updating
research instrument and equipment. Nevertheless, the resource scarcity of research
production factors still exists, and the competition from domestic and international
universities is muchfiercer inside and outside China in the context of globalization.
The coexistence of resource scarcity andfierce competition means that, in the
process of building world-class universities, China can’t exclusively rely on the
unlimited increases of research investment, contrarily, China should highly
emphasize the betterment of research productivity, and gradually switch from the
extensive growth mode to the intensive growth mode featured by higher produc-
tivity. From this view, it’s of great importance to objectively evaluate and analyze
the research productivity changes of 211Us in recent years.
Combing through existing Chinese literature, in the studies related to evaluations
on the university research productivity, a traditional and general method is to
compute the single factor productivity, such as research output per capita, research
output per¥10,000 grant and so on. However, research activity is kind of com-
prehensive and complicated production procedure with all use of human capital,
knowledge capital, physical capital andfinancial capital. As a result of the sub-
(^1) Recruitment Program of Global Expert is aimed to attract Chinese scholars who have already
obtained tenured position in oversee universities and institutes.
(^2) Chang Jiang Scholars Program is aimed to reward those top scholars in Chinese universities.
There are two major types, one is full-time scholar, the other is lecture scholar.
©Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017
Y. Hu et al.,Evaluating Research Efficiency of Chinese Universities,
New Frontiers of Educational Research, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-4030-6_5