Does the Estimation Technique Matter for Efficiency Measures? : Comparative Efficiency Analysis of Public Universities with Parametric and Non-Parametric Methods

Estimating efficiencies of higher education institutions (HEIs) has become a central area of research in efficiency analysis literature, particularly during the last two decades. Although the number of efficiency analysis researches in higher education has risen, comparative research estimating the efficiencies of HEIs employing both parametric and non-parametric techniques is rather scarce in this particular area. This paper, which estimates economic efficiencies for 53 Turkish public HEIs between 2005 and 2010, belongs to the pioneering stream of researches conducting a comprehensive efficiency analysis on public sector organisations employing both parametric and non-parametric estimation techniques. It employs Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) simultaneously for the same case, concluding that efficiency estimation conducted by parametric and non-parametric approaches is diverging apparently in terms of not only mean efficiency values but also the efficiency rankings of universities. Moreover, to accommodate two different methodologies, the primary aim is that the results yielded from the parametric technique can be compared and contrasted with the results achieved using the non-parametric technique for further policy-making projections