A DEA-based Method For Evaluating Relative Performance Among Higher Education Institutions

In recent years, in order to improve the educational efficiency and boost the country's economic and social development, large number of domestic institutions of higher learning have been carrying out the reform of performance and conducting performance appraisal, under the guidance of the National educational development plans and driven by the requirements of the times that the Knowledge Based Economy is developing rapidly. Although the practical experience of many institutions of higher learning which has been carrying out the reform of performance and conducting performance appraisal shows that performance evaluation is useful in promoting and improving the level of management for colleges and universities, stimulating internal vitality and the enthusiasm of faculty and staff, etc. However, current domestic relevant researches about the performance evaluation of colleges and universities are still at an exploratory stage, there has not yet formed a relatively complete application architecture as a guide for performance evaluation, and has resulted that the practice of colleges and universities performance appraisal was facing many difficulties, such as too much emphasis on the assessment of results and pursuing "Heroes can be judged on the basis of outcome", differences of the disciplines leads that empowering for evaluation indexes is difficult. As a result, the performance evaluation of colleges and universities is difficult to be recognized by subordinate departments and faculty and staff. And then the progress of performance reform is slowly and the educational efficiency of colleges and universities is also affected.In view of the current practice of relative performance evaluation for colleges and universities, there are issues that the limitations of traditional performance evaluation methods itself lead that the evaluation results lack of objectivity and fairness, and cannot be well exclude the influence of differences in the disciplines. Firstly, based on the existing research achievements, starting from human resources, financial resources, material resources, talent cultivation, social services and research, the research on the construction of evaluation index system and model for the inter-departmental relative performance of colleges and universities was proceeded. And then as an example, the inter-departmental relative performance of 30 departments in College K were evaluated and analyzed by using data envelopment analysis (DEA) method based on the survey data, and found out the factors that caused ineffective for these departments which were non-DEA efficiency and proposed the corresponding improvement measures and programs. Finally, comparative analysis with the traditional performance evaluation methods and the results show that it can be well exclude the influence of differences in the disciplines and overcome these deficiencies of traditional performance evaluation methods, such as stronger subjective and arbitrary, unfair and other issues, and well reflects the level of departmental performance.