Students and Teachers: A DEA Approach to the Relative Efficiency of Portuguese Public Universities

We employ a non-parametric methodology, Data Envelopment Analysis, to estimate efficiency scores for Portuguese public universities, using data mainly for 2003. The input measures are constructed from the number of teachers and from universities’ spending while the outputs measures are based on the undergraduate success rate and on the number of doctoral dissertations. Using frontier analysis we are able to separate universities that might qualify, as “performing well” from those were some improvement might be possible in terms of efficiency. This could imply a better allocation by the universities of the usually scarce public financial resources available to tertiary education.