Benchmarking in Higher Education Using Data Envelopment Analysis and the Bologna Process Data

Quality Assurance is one of the core elements of the Bologna Process in European Higher Education and the Bologna Process data of the programs can serve as a rich resource for assessing program quality and benchmarking since the data follow a standardized framework for any program. Despite the standardized framework, the data of each program require an organization in order to come up with comprehensive measures so that such measures can become comparable between programs. This paper aims to propose an analytical approach for academic program quality assessment utilizing the Bologna declarations of the programs. First, we propose a methodology on data organization. Second, the organized data are used for assessments at program and subdivision levels via Data Envelopment Analysis. We illustrate our proposed methodology in an application to Business bachelor degree programs in Turkish universities. We discuss the implications to various stakeholders of higher education from policy makers to students.