Evaluating italian university teaching efficiency convergence: a non-parametric frontier approach

The Bologna Process promoted a wide-ranging reform of High Education systems in order to improve teaching activities throughout Europe. This paper evaluates the effect of these reforms on teaching efficiency of the Italian universities in the period 2000-2010. We employ the bootstrapped Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) algorithm to evaluate efficiency and then examine convergence using several panel data estimators. We find evidence of convergence but technical efficiency increased mainly in the first period of implemented reform. Moreover, we find strong evidences of persistence of gaps both between regions and universities.