A DEA-based Research On The Effect Of University Mergers In China

In order to overcome the shortcomings caused by the adjustment of faculties in the 1950 s,such as division,small scale,narrow specialty and low efficiency of school,the Chinese government promoted the large-scale university merger,under the guidance of education reform strategy,which aroused strong repercussions at home and abroad.From the macro and meso perspective,university merger aims to optimize the structure and layout of higher education in the region or the country,and use limited educational resources and funds rationally;from the micro level,it aims to improve the quality of education and the efficiency of running schools.The particularity of higher education determines the non-immediacy of the effect of university merger.This paper focuses on the effect of merger at the micro level,taking 17 universities directly under the ministry of education which had merger behaviors in 1998-2000,the most frequent period of university merger,as the main research object,and placing them on a longer timeline to evaluate the effect of merger.On the one hand,based on the perspective of absolute scale,the comprehensive strength of the merged universities is analyzed by means of the changes in input and output and the development of the discipline;on the other hand,from the perspective of relative scale,the DEA model based on Russell measure is used to calculate the input-output efficiency of merged universities before and after the merger.Finally,combined with the classification of types of university mergers,the results of the merger are summarized.From the perspective of absolute scale,the input-output scale of “Strong Alliance" and integration into medical colleges has been significantly expanded,and only the original comprehensive universities integrated into medicine have good discipline development and strong comprehensive strength.From the perspective of relative scale,the merged universities fail to effectively improve the efficiency of running schools in a short period after merger,and the efficiency of running schools fluctuates and rises in a long period after merger.Finally,this paper proposes that the assessment and evaluation mechanism based on the absolute amount should be changed to focus on the input-output systematically,the universities with larger absolute scale but lower efficiency should improve the efficiency of resource utilization,and the universities with "large and complete" should optimize their internal management from "complete" to "integrated".