Higher Education Management and Policy

Frequency :
3 times a year
ISSN :
1726-9822 (online)
ISSN :
1682-3451 (print)
DOI :
10.1787/17269822
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Previously published as Higher Education Management, Higher Education Management and Policy (HEMP) is published three times each year and is edited by the OECD’s Programme on Institutional Management in Higher Education. It covers the field through articles and reports on such issues as quality assurance, human resources, funding, and internationalisation. It also is a source of information on activities and events organised by OECD’s IMHE Programme.

Also available in: French
Article
 

The economics of teaching

what lies behind student-faculty ratios? You do not have access to this content

Authors:
Andrea Schenker-Wicki, Matthias Inauen
Publication Date
16 Jan 2012
Pages
15
Bibliographic information
No.:
15,
Volume:
23,
Issue:
3
Pages
1–20
DOI
10.1787/hemp-23-5kg0vswcq7nt

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The student-faculty ratio is of great significance to policy makers and media as a popular measure of education and teaching quality. Due to its simplicity and the availability of data, it is often used in higher education policy for allocating resources and for ranking universities. This is especially so in some European countries which do not have selective admission policies and where universities have to cope with huge numbers of students. However, there is no definition and no empirically validated data for an appropriate student-faculty ratio. To close this gap, we constructed a model with parameters relevant for high quality teaching and education and validated them empirically by conducting a survey among university professors in business administration. The results clearly illustrate that student-faculty ratios are discipline specific and depend whether the university is research or teaching oriented.