Political-economic cycles: the efficiency of public spending at the University of Brasilia in the period 1995-2020

Abstract

Educational issues can be analyzed on three major aspects: 1) access, 2) adequate management, and 3) the quality of the services offered. This work was restricted to evaluating, from de perspective of management, whick political cycles showed the greatest efficiency in spending at the University of Brasília between the years 1995 a 2020. During this period, Brazil was governed by very different party ideologies, especially regarding the way of financing higher education. The method used to evaluate efficiency was Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a linear programming technique that estimates a production frontier with real data, generating a non-parametric frontier. The DEA model was with output-oriented variable returns to scale (VRS) in order to evaluate how much could be produced from inputs. For inputs variables were used the settled expenses (expenditures), the number of faculty and the number of administrative technicians, while for outputs were considered: the number of vacancies filled and the number of graduates. The study showed that full efficiency was reached in two moments: the period 1995-1998 and the period 2003-2010. It is important to note that the highest efficiencies are achieved precisely in governments that have major disagreements with the treatment of spending in the area of education, however, it is possible to affirm that the indexes are achieved attending to ideological-party premises. Finally, in a scenario where there is a tendency to reduce the resources destined to education, it is of great importance to measure efficiency indicators that aim at constant improvement in the management process.