Assessing the performance of business colleges in Taiwan using data envelopment analysis and student based value-added performance indicators

The purpose of this study is to construct a student-based performance evaluation model for business schools in Taiwan. College graduates' starting wage and their multiple abilities cultivated in school are used as performance indicators. The value-added forms of these indicators are employed to assess the pure impact of school on graduate's performance. To prevent impractical indicator weights, we incorporate job market recruiters' weights from an AHP survey into the assurance region data envelopment analysis (AR-DEA) for empirical analysis. Empirical results show that the public schools on average outperform the private schools. However, there are still some private schools that perform better than the public ones. Besides, in regard to the discriminatory power and the distribution of output weights, the proposed AR-DEA is better than DEA in measuring the performance of the business colleges in Taiwan. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.