The Efficiency of Russian Higher Education Institutions and Its Determinants

In Russia, resources available for higher education institutions (HEIs) have been reduced while the expectations of their results have grown. This raises questions about the efficiency of Russian HEIs and the factors influencing it. In this paper, estimations of the efficiency of Russian HEIs for the 2012/13-2014/15 academic years and its determinants are presented. Ratios of weighted outputs and weighted inputs constructed with data envelopment analysis (DEA) are used as the HEIs efficiency measure. Total financial resources of HEIs are used as the input and measures of education and research results are used as the outputs. For the analysis of changes in efficiency the Malmquist index is used. The relation between efficiency scores and the characteristics of HEIs are investigated using a Tobit regression. More...