Using Coopers Approach to Explore the Extent of Congestion in the New British Universities

This paper uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) to explore the issue of congestion in British universities.? The focus is on 41 former polytechnics that became universities in 1992, and the analysis covers the period 1995/6 to 2003/4.? These new universities differ from the older universities in many ways, especially in terms of their far higher student:staff ratios and much lower research funding per member of staff.? The primary aim is to examine whether this under-resourcing of the new universities has led to congestion, in the sense that their output has been decreased as a result of having too many students.? This phenomenon is measured using the method proposed by Cooper et al. in a series of articles.? To check the sensitivity of the results to different specifications, three alternative DEA models are formulated.? The results reveal that a substantial amount of congestion was present throughout the period under review, and in a wide range of universities.? An overabundance of undergraduate students is identified as the largest single cause of congestion in the former polytechnics.? Less plausibly, the results also suggest that academic overstaffing was a major cause of congestion.? By contrast, postgraduates and ?other expenditure? are found to play a noticeably smaller role in generating congestion.