Efficiency Analysis of State Universities: A Case of Turkey

The purpose of this study is to determine the efficiencies of the state universities by using data envelopment analysis (DEA) which is a performance measurement method for increasing the efficiency of educational institutions. Furthermore, state universities are ranked with the help of super-efficiency model. For this purpose, the number of professor the number of associate professor the number of assistant professor, the number of research assistants and total budget expenses are used as input variables, the number of undergraduate and graduate students, the number of graduate students, the number of projects, the number of international publications are used output variables for 52 state universities in Turkey for year of 2009-2010. The results show that Cukurova University, Dokuz Eylul University, Galatasaray University, Gazi University, Karadeniz Technical University, and Middle East Technical University are super-efficient for the academic year 2009-2010. Besides, Cumhuriyet University is the most inefficient state univeristy in Turkey. Furthermore, Yildiz Technical University, Dumlupinar University, Marmara University, Mugla University, Ankara University, Mustafa Kemal University, Istanbul Technical University, Erciyes University, Istanbul University, Gazi University, Sakarya University, Afyon Kocatepe University, Hacettepe University, Ataturk University, Anadolu University, and Ondokuz Mars University are found to be efficient for the academic year 2009-2010. In conclusion, the overall average efficiency of the state universities is low which means that the universities are technically inefficient. This can be interpreted as the higher education sector performing equally not well for the academic year 2009-2010.