Barra, C., Destefanis,, S., Sena, V. et al. (1 more author) (2024) Students’ performance and faculty efficiency. Assessing the role of gender through a metafrontier. Journal of Economic Studies, 51 (9). pp. 323-337. ISSN 0144-3585
Abstract
Purpose
This paper provides novel evidence on the role of gender in the performance of university students, which is particularly relevant to the debate on the performance of female students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects.
Design/methodology/approach
Our approach relies on the metafrontier approach proposed by Huang et al. (2014), which measures students' efficiency within a given faculty and the impact of the faculty’s technology on students’ efficiency. We use a sample of 53,159 first-year students in 8 faculties from a large university in southern Italy from 2002–2003 to 2010–2011.
Findings
Students’ efficiency is relatively low, reflecting an essential role of unobserved heterogeneity. The different technologies of somewhat similar faculties have minimal impact on efficiency. There is a performance gap against women in five faculties, which on average is strongest for the faculties in the pure and applied science area. This gap increases with the proportion of female students and decreases with female lecturers.
Practical implications
The metafrontier has the benefit of providing relevant policy information on the drivers of student success by relying on data that universities routinely generate and preserve.
Originality/value
The stochastic metafrontier approach allows us to separate the group-specific frontiers from the metafrontier, yielding a decomposition of the efficiency scores of various faculties into technical efficiency scores and technological gaps.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © CristianBarra, Sergio Destefanis, Vania Sena and Roberto Zotti. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode |
Keywords: | Women in STEM fields; University efficiency; Metafrontier |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Management School (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number ECONOMIC & SOCIAL RESEARCH COUNCIL ES/W007231/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 24 Sep 2024 14:38 |
Last Modified: | 24 Sep 2024 14:38 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Emerald |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1108/JES-01-2024-0037 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:217601 |