Benchmarking in Education: Data Envelopment Analysis Approaches for Solving Bi-Objective Problems

Policy frameworks of the European Commission have been developed to benchmark and monitor progress toward a common vision. The complexity of frameworks raised the need to add a second objective within the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). We proposed two benchmarking approaches through a bi-objective DEA model. The first model sets goal-adjusted targets and identifies strategies for improving national performance toward the EU-level goals. The model solves a bi-objective problem that imposes two objectives of closeness, between the actual performances and targets (effort) and between targets and EU-level goals (adjustment). The second model incorporates information on gender equality and finds targets that close the gender gap and improve performance. The model also solves a bi-objective problem that imposes two objectives of closeness. One objective is concerned with the effort that needs to be made for the achievement of the targets set, while the other objective is to minimize the gap between the targets set for male and female performance. This paper summarizes the proposed models and highlights the benefit of using bi-objective DEA approaches in the context of European policy frameworks. The proposed approaches have been applied in education, and two illustrative examples are discussed. However, these models can be applied in other areas facing similar challenges at the country or organization level.