Using Data Envelopment Analysis in Higher Education in Palestine رسالة ماجستير

Abstract

Higher education is one of the most important sectors in any country because of its impact on economy, healthcare, community and other sectors. The motivation for this thesis is the lack of researches in measuring the efficiency and performance of institutions of higher education in Palestine. In this thesis, Data envelopment analysis was used as a non- parametric method to measure the efficiency and assess the performance of the traditional universities in Palestine in the period 2006/2010. Results were compared with the well-known linear regression analysis which is a parametric method. The basic Charne, Cooper and Rodes (CCR) model and Malmiquist index analysis of data envelopment analysis along with a standard regression analysis were used in order to achieve the goal. The results revealed that the most developed universities in Palestine in the period 2006/2010 according to the productivity growth were Gaza’s traditional universities as Al- Aqsa University / Gaza comes first with productivity growth of (24.8%), Islamic University / Gaza comes second with a productivity growth of (23.8%) and Al- Azhar University / Gaza were in fourth place with a productivity growth of (12.1%). The West bank traditional universities had just one university in the top four which was the Arab American University as it comes third with productivity growth of (16.3%) . The traditional universities in Palestine in general showed a growth in many aspects as the data shows promising evolution in the next few years. Tending to higher education is also growing in Palestine and has a promising future.