Performance measure of academic departments using data envelopment analysis

Abstract

Performance efficiency of educational institution should be continuously monitored and improved to ensure that qualified manpower and research are produced efficiently in meeting the university standard of intellectuals. With a systematic performance monitoring system, resources will be channeled sufficiently and tasks may be completed effectively. Therefore, the main objective of the research is to use data envelopment analysis (DEA) to measure the performance efficiency of the academic departments in a faculty in a public university in Malaysia. Two inputs and three outputs which strongly influence the efficiency of the academic departments were selected. The second objective is to rank the academic departments according to their performance efficiencies. The final objective is to uplift the efficiency score of the less efficient department. In general, all academic departments in the faculty recorded a high level of efficiency of above 90%. The academic departments with perfect efficiency score were considered as the benchmark departments. By means of the reference set obtained in the output, the improvement strategies recommended to the less efficient academic departments are to reduce its Input 1 and to increase its Output 3.