Budgetary constraints on the public purse have led Australian Federal and State governments to focus increasingly on the efficiency of public institutions, including Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutes. In this study, we define efficiency as the relationship between financial and administrative inputs and educational outputs. We…

Almost 7 million young Americans (age 16-24) are insufficiently attached to school or work. Based on conservative estimates, we can generate over $1 billion just by helping a mere 0.1 percent earn a high school credential and complete their first year of college through Back on Track Designs. This brief lays out the cost of setting up these GED-…

A multiproduct cost function is estimated for English higher education institutions using a panel of data from recent years. The panel approach allows estimation by means of a random parameter stochastic frontier model which provides considerable new insights in that it allows the impact on costs of inter-institutional differences in the cost…

This article presents a model for the analysis of cost efficiency within the framework of data envelopment analysis models. It calculates the cost excess, separating a unit of production from its optimal or frontier levels, and, at the same time, breaks these excesses down into three explanatory factors: (a) technical inefficiency, which depends…

Benefit-cost analysis consists of establishing ratios of benefits to costs for a set of project variants. The decision rule is to select that project variant where the ratio is a maximum. This paper argues that specification and estimation errors can contribute to findings for large-scale systems of benefit-cost ratios approximating zero. The…

Critiques of conventional models for evaluating the utility of organizational human resource policies. Questions the implicit assumption that utilities are invariant across changing labor market conditions, and concludes that omission of these considerations overstates the likely utility of the programs being evaluated. (TE)

This paper provides a conceptual framework for addressing the issue of effectiveness and efficiency in education. It considers alternative criteria for identifying efficiency and discusses constraints on improving efficiency. The first section distinguishes efficiency from effectiveness, and also distinguishes "internal" from "external" efficiency…

The parameters of an evaluation design determine the use to which the evaluation is to be put, the ultimate user of the results, and the capabilities of the school information system. Evaluation supports decisionmaking in program adoption and program improvement, as well as research for a better understanding of the educative process. An…

This paper presents a brief final report of the system and products of the cost-effectiveness/benefit analysis project conducted at Indiana University which combined the two concepts of cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analysis into a cost-effectiveness/benefit analysis model for postsecondary vocational programs. The project also developed…

The author reviews five cost-effectiveness basic models including log-log correlational, general utility theory, simultaneous equations, nonlinear theoretical, and feedback. Several suggestions are made to improve the models and increase the domain of problems that can be considered by the models. In the second part of the paper, the author…

A model of cost-effectiveness is outlined which enables consideration of some non-financial, as well as financial, elements of educational systems at school or district levels. The model enables the decision-maker to compare educational outcomes of different units, to assess the impact of alternative levels of financial input, and to select…

The least understood of complex systems is that which produces educated people. Superficially, many key elements of a manufacturing organization are part of the system: a product, product tolerance limits, methods for assessing product deviation, and a feed-back system for making compensatory adjustments. In layman's terms these elements are:…

Describes a conceptual framework for cost-effectiveness analysis that attempts to determine the relative impact of the different input variables on the output measures. Applies the model to a school district. (Author/JM)

Some aspects of a study designed to illustrate relations between the size of units and their teaching, research and service outputs, or the structure of their resources are presented. Resources and outputs were measured by total expenditure, hours of teaching, publications, citations, etc. Size was defined by expenditure on staff. (Author/MLW)