Parametric and Non-Parametric Methods for Efficiency Assessment of State Higher Vocational Schools in 2009-2011

Objective: As a great number of higher schools in Poland are financed from public resources, there arises a question about the adequacy of those schools' inputs to the obtained outputs. The aim of this paper is to examine the technical efficiency of 27 state higher vocational schools in Poland. Research Design & Methods: The research was conducted for the years 2009-2011. The Stochastic Frontier Approach (SFA), as well as Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) were applied. The other one was calculated both for Constant Returns to Scale (CRS) and for Variable Returns to Scale (VRS). Findings: The majority of the studied schools, found as inefficient in the analysis conducted with the DEA method with CRS models, are found to be efficient in VRS models, demonstrate relatively lower efficiency when calculated with the SFA method. Implications & Recommendations: For the efficiency evaluation of higher education institutions, models of VRS should be applied. It enables to identify the units that despite operating in a different scale are fully efficient. The size and the scale of operations may have a significant impact on the efficiency of activities conducted by higher education institutions. Contribution & Value Added: The work compares two methods (parametric and non parametric) for the evaluation of technical efficiency that are present in subject literature (SFA is less popular) but are rarely evaluated and compared for its applicability to the higher education sector.