Costs, efficiency and economies of scale and scope in the English HE sector
- Geraint Johnes, Lancaster University
Following recent changes to the funding mechanism for higher education, students in England face high tuition costs.
The taxpayer continues to subsidise this education heavily, however – both through direct contributions and through writing off unpaid loans. Government therefore retains an interest in the efficiency with which higher education is delivered.
I review the literature, and, using data for 2013-14, apply the appropriate frontier methods to model the structure of costs in this diverse sector. In doing so, I uncover information about the returns to scale and scope within the higher education sector, and identify differences in efficiency across institutions.
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Geraint Johnes is Professor of Economics at Lancaster University. His research specialism is in the area of labour economics, and he has a particular interest in the economics of education. He has published numerous articles in this area in journals such as the Economic Journal, Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics; and his research has been funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council, the European Union, and international organisations including the OECD and World Bank. His current research includes projects in the areas of social capital, spatial unemployment dynamics, and the analysis of efficiency in the higher education sector.
