Essays on University Efficiency Analysis and Entrepreneurship among University Graduates

Essays on University Efficiency Analysis and Entrepreneurship among University Graduates

The thesis consists of five papers: three deal with the efficiency of higher education institutions (HEI) and two with entrepreneurship among university graduates. The efficiency of HEIs is analyzed at three different levels: units of one university, universities of one country and universities of a group of European countries.

Using data envelopment analysis (DEA) the first paper compares technical efficiency among university units at the Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm). An interesting result is that there seems to be a complementary relationship between efficiency of resource utilization in teaching and in research.

The second paper applies stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) to estimate the cost efficiency of Swedish higher education institutions. According to the estimates, half of the Swedish HEIs have an above average efficiency of 85 percent. The efficiency differences are mainly influenced by the source of funding, HEI size, the number of students per faculty as well as faculty and student compositions.

The third paper analyses the cost efficiency of universities among a set of public higher education institutions from six European countries by means of stochastic frontier techniques. The results suggest small variation in the mean economic efficiency of higher education institutions from UK, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Switzerland, implying that the efficiency differences are not explained by country effects. Instead the variations in efficiency are related to organizational differences.

The two essays on entrepreneurship among university graduates are based on a unique dataset encompassing individual level data on all employees registered in the Swedish labor market. The first paper explores the differences in entrepreneurial choice of graduates from different universities. The main finding from this paper is that the entrepreneurial choice of graduates from internationally ranked Swedish universities systematically differs from others with the difference varying by the area of education.

The second paper on entrepreneurship aims at explaining the high interest in entrepreneurship among arts graduates and finds that the need for self-expression is among the main motivations for their high interest in entrepreneurship.