Abstract

In any economic organization, the existing relationship between its inputs and its outputs must be established in such a way that the management of its tangible and intangible human resources allows producing the maximum amount of useful products with the least amount of resources. In this article, we have analyzed this relation of efficiency applied to the university environment. In particular, the best universities in Europe have been studied. Previously, a rigorous study of the existing bibliography has been carried out. As a result, it has been seen that these studies include specific results analysis, without taking into account the three basic functions of 21st century universities, such as those related to improving the employability of their graduates, transmitting and expanding their scientific knowledge, and the modernization of the national economic system through the introduction of improvements in business activity. The methodology used in is data envelopment analysis (DEA). This model has allowed determining the relative position of each university in relation to the distance it maintains with respect to an ideal efficiency frontier. It also shows that aspects must be improved to be in a position of maximum efficiency. Four types of analysis have been applied. DEA 1 “Analysis of labor efficiency” in which the improvement of the degree of employability of university graduates has been analyzed, DEA 2 “Analysis of academic efficiency” that has allowed us to measure the efficiency in publications, the DEA 3 “Analysis of technological efficiency “that has allowed identifying the universities that are more efficient in terms of patents and finally DEA 4” Global efficiency analysis “that encompasses all the previous ones. Likewise, a correlation analysis was carried out among the results obtained. Among the main conclusions highlight how there is a high degree of correlation between the universities that achieve the best results in academic efficiency and technological efficiency. The comparisons in the level of global university efficiency made in this research work are the result of applying the DEA methodology on a production function that has been constructed using four variables inputs – undergraduate and graduate students and national and foreign teachers – and three output variables – levels of employment, publications and patents.

Keywords: ranking, university, employability, data envelopment analysis, patents, publications.

JEL Classification: O32.

Cite as: Canto, M. B., & Lopez, L. B. (2018). Ranking of global efficiency of the best universities in Europe. Marketing and Management of Innovations, 3, 34-47. https://doi.org/10.21272/mmi.2018.3-03

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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