Sustainability through Efficiency of Alternative Educational Institutions: An Empirical Study using DEA Approach

Sustainability and scalability of business require appropriate strategy and system through accurate allocation and utilization of available resources. Efficiency considers maximization of the output with a given level of input or minimization of the input for a given level of output. This study has been conducted considering the micro level variables, isolated from persuade of macro level factors. A comparative analysis in efficiency among government and private and charitable educational institutions has been conducted with the help of primary data, collected in West Burdwan District, West Bengal. Tim Coelli's DEAP software has been used to test the efficiency through Data Envelopment Analysis with multiple inputs and outputs. An output oriented DEA model has been validated for this study; in government institutions the inputs are limited and thus the possibility to minimize the same is not applicable, hence the output oriented DEA has been postulated. It has been found that there is a considerable inequality in efficiency distribution of educational institutions as measured through data envelopment analysis; it is also found that, the charitable educational institutions are highly efficient, followed by the private and government educational institutions. The different level of efficiency among these three types of institutions has been proven significant with Mann-Whitney U test. The recommended approach in this study confers decision making assistance for institutional policy implication, strategy evaluation and resource allocation.