Efficiency in the Public University: Towards an Adequate Measuring of Research Laboratories

Usual efficiency evaluation methods, such as Data Envelopment Analysis and Stochastic Frontier Estimation tend to calculate efficiency scores which are valid only at a given moment and for the units where in the sample. At most, Malmquist index determines efficiency scores for period t+1. Those drawbacks can be avoided by translating efficiency scores in terms of probabilities trough the Discriminant Analysis which enables also, to provide appropriate weightings activities of research laboratories, object of this study. In addition to Discriminant Analysis, Hierarchical Cluster Analysis is used to classify those activities into homogeneous groups, while Data Envelopment Analysis is employed to categorize laboratories in efficient and inefficient structures. This method is applied on a public university in east of Morocco. This study shows that indexed publications as well as the supported doctoral thesis or in state of supervision have the greatest impact on efficiency of the research laboratories.