Teaching Efficiency of Italian Universities: A Conditional Frontier Analysis

Abstract

AbstractThe aim of this chapter is to provide a comparative analysis of the performance of teaching at Italian university by evaluating the efficiency of heterogeneous faculty courses at the national level. For this purpose, we use advanced and robust nonparametric tools recently developed in nonparametric efficiency frontier literature. This performance assessment does not rely on hypotheses about the relationship between inputs and outputs and allows us to account for the heterogeneity of the analyzed courses. The overall analysis carried out at the national level for Italy extends the traditional and limited one-dimensional indicators available through SUA-CdS data and ad hoc surveys on graduates conducted by ANVUR (National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes) and MIUR (Ministry of Education, University and Research). The estimated efficiency scores are used to analyze current trends and changes in the teaching activities of Italian universities.