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The Evaluation of University Departments. A Case Study for Firenze

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Abstract

Over the last two decades, the interest to assess the quality of university teaching and research has considerably grown. This paper presents a study concerning the evaluation of the departments of the University of Firenze using Data Envelopment Analysis. It shows several applications with different variables choices to assess the performance both in teaching and in research activities. The reliability of the preferred specification was verified with a heuristic experiment, using different variables and a different number of variables. Particular attention is given to the problem of data availability and quality (e.g. for research output assessment).

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Notes

  1. The literature on DEA is really vast; for the model description we basically refer to Coelli et al. (2005).

  2. We used DEAP, a free software developed by T. Coelli that can be downloaded at the web site www.uq.edu.au/economics/cepa/deap.htm.

  3. Source: MIUR database: http://statistica.miur.it.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Statistics, University of Firenze, Viale Morgagni, 59, Firenze, 50134, Italy

    Lucia Buzzigoli, Antonio Giusti & Alessandro Viviani

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  1. Lucia Buzzigoli
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  2. Antonio Giusti
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  3. Alessandro Viviani
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Correspondence to Alessandro Viviani.

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Buzzigoli, L., Giusti, A. & Viviani, A. The Evaluation of University Departments. A Case Study for Firenze. Int Adv Econ Res 16, 24–38 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11294-009-9243-6

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