sustainability and potentiality of university development. From this point of view,
we should group our sample 211Us into 985 and non-985 universities, and make
comparisons between them. Therefore, in this section, we will use the results of
TFP Malmquist index and its composition in Sect. 5.1, to analyze the changing
status between such two groups from a comparative perspective.
5.2.1 NEAM Disciplines...............................
5.2.1.1 Annual Productivity Changes of 985Us and Non-985Us
In this subsection, wefirst analyze the annual changes of Malmquist-TFP index and
its decomposition of NEAM research separately in 985Us and non-985Us. The
detailed results are presented in Tables5.11and5.12in Appendix. When analyzing
the changes of productivity, the unity is the cutoff point or the threshold. In our
context, if some index is less than unity in one group of universities, it means that
research productivity of this group is decreased relative to previous period. Vice
versa, if such index of one group is larger than unity, it means that research
productivity of this group is increased relative to previous period. Thus, we set the
baseline at unity, and plot thefive-year (2006–2010) average of TFP index and its
decomposition separately for 985Us and non-985Us. Please see Fig.5.3.
Overall speaking, it appears that research productivities of 985Us and
non-985Us are both in the uptrend during 2006–2010, with the latter outperforming
the former. Similar with the full sample results, the productivity growth in both
groups are mainly driven by technical change. More detailed discussion can be
given as below.
Firstly, TFPs of both 985Us and non-985Us are in the uptrend, with the latter
outperforming the former. The annual TFP growth rate of non-985Us is 9% in
2006 – 2010, while that of 985Us is merely 4.3%.
Secondly, the decomposition results show that the TFP improvement of NEAM
research in both groups is mainly from the“growth effect”brought by technical
change. By decomposing TFP index into TC index and TEC index, it’s easy tofind
that, to non-985Us, the annual growth rate of TC index is 7%, and that of TEC
indexes is 1.9%; to 985Us, the annual growth rate of TC index is 3.3%, and that of
TEC index is 1%. This demonstrates that higher technical change pushes
non-985Us’research productivities forward with acceleration.
Thirdly, according to the decomposition of TEC, the improvements of scale
efficiency and resources allocation of both 985Us and non-985Us are fairly mod-
erate, which is especially obvious to 985Us. To NEAM research of non-985Us,
their annual growth of SEC index is merely 0.3%, and that of PTEC index is 1.6%.
To NEAM research of 985Us, their annual growth rate of SEC index approaches
zero, and that of PTEC index is merely 0.9%. As the result of the tiny improvement
of SEC and PTEX index, both groups are not expected to perform well in technical
efficiency change.
226 5 Dynamic Evaluation on Research Productivity...