An efficiency analysis of higher education institutions in China from a regional perspective considering the external environmental impact

Higher education plays a significant role in economic growth and social development. However, the uneven development of higher education in China has become an important factor restricting its overall progress. Traditional data envelopment analysis (DEA) models used by previous studies are deterministic and susceptible to the impacts of measurement errors and the omission of unobserved but potentially relevant variables, which we referred to as environmental variables latter. To address both of these drawbacks, we develop and implement a three-stage DEA model to examine the efficiency of China’s mainland 31 provinces’ Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in 2016, which fills the gap in the efficiency evaluation of HEIs in all provinces of China. The “real” efficiency about management performance of each province’s HEIs is obtained and decomposed after the impacts of environmental variables and random errors are eliminated. Lastly, relevant policy suggestions are given on how to improve the efficiency of each province’s HEIs.