The application of production functions to the higher education system — some examples from Portuguese universities

✍ Scribed by M. Emília Silva Freire; J. J. R. Fraústo Silva

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1975
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 632 KB
• Volume: 4
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0018-1560
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00154469

✦ Synopsis

Production functions were established for the Arts and Law Faculties of Coimbra and Lisbon Universities and for the Higher Institute of Engineering of Lisbon, in which the number of enrolled students was related to the number of professors and assistants. It was possible to find in Coimbra and Lisbon Universities the existence of possibilities of substitution among those factors and economies of scale. In the case of the Higher Institute of Engineering there seems to exist a relation of complementarity between the number of professors and assistants. Also with regard to this Institute, a production function for graduates was estimated which relates them to the expenditures on academic staff and materials. It was found that in this case it was necessary to introduce time as a representative of technological progress, although it was found to be negative. These results are discussed, and the interest and the limitations of the use of production functions for educational management purposes are outlined.

Although the application of production functions in the field of educational management has often been proposed and discussed by several authors , there have been very few practical cases in the field of higher education where actual use of these functions has been attempted. Some examples have been presented in the United States but they relate to secondary rather than tertiary education .

There are several reasons why studies on this subject remain on a theoretical level and why the results obtained have not been regarded with confidence. To list just a few, one could refer to the difficulties in identifying and measuring the outputs of educational systems, the difficulties in