Abstract:

Purpose:
Nowadays, most of developed countries are facing an extreme challenge to establish efficient and effective educational system despite of continuous changes in economic, political and social environment all over the world. Therefore, a systematic analysis and evaluation for effective resource allocation in a higher education system is essential to provide competitive advantages for future survival and actions for the goal achievement. As enrollments in higher education continue to expand, public funding is becoming increasingly scarce. Thus, special focus has been given to productivity and efficiency in higher education in the last decade. Educational policy and research in the education field shall support innovation and enable increasing efficiency in case it, together with Government measures, imposes regulatory, institutional and organizational frameworks through: mobilizing stakeholders; review of sectorial regulators from the innovation point of view; organizational charting; strengthening relationships between researches, practice and vocational policy; cooperation among networks, providing support to practical communities; creating a financing model that is adapted to goals and priorities.

Development of human resources implies: mapping of human resources; professional strengthening of people whose task is research and development; establishing a standard competencies and career development model; strengthening of managing organizations and organizational development. In order to ensure quality in higher education, the following are necessary: strengthening of the function of quality assurance and evaluation; connecting innovation policies and standards of sectorial policies; defining quality standards based on practical needs; use of potential originating from international cooperation on quality.

Methodology/Results:
The main goal of this paper is to compare efficiency of higher education systems in European countries using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The Data Envelopment Analysis is a nonparametric approach based on linear programming, which allows calculation of the efficiency of decision-making units with multiple inputs and outputs. Research limitations/implications: Inputs included in this analysis are: research and development expenditure as percentage of GDP by country, number of employees in higher education by country, number of students and number of researchers by country. On the side of outputs, three variables were included: number of publications by country, number of graduates and number of graduates at doctoral level by country. The data were collected from the Eurostat and Scimago database.

Originality/Value of paper:
The results of this analysis show which countries use their resources in higher education system in the most efficient way and also suggests the ways of resources allocation improvement for countries which do not achieve the maximal relative efficiency. Although underfunded, Serbia's science shows a noticeable growth of international competitiveness which demonstrates that education and science have a potential to encourage a broader national revival. The successes of our scientists are an important element of our national identity.

Keywords:

Data Envelopment Analysis, Higher Education, Efficiency.