New Approach to the Measurement of Educational Outcomes for Institutions of High Learning.

摘要

There currently exists and an extensive literature on the economics of education and the use of educational production functions for the measurement of educational output. Most of that literature has been directed at elementary and secondary education with only a small part directed at the university level. It develops appropriate joint product theory, and applies the theory to the measurement of output at universities. The outputs selected for measurement are finishers and dropouts, although the value of dropouts to society is not precisely known. The methodology selected to develop the models which in turn test the hypothesis that joint products of finishers and dropouts is a valid, worthwhile output measurement is that of linear subjective econometrics. one interesting facet of subjective econometrics is the development of prior opinions through elicitation; using opinions of 'experts'; those who have experience with admission processes and implicitly the attrition of students. The institution selected for study is the Air Force Academy. Three general classes of inputs were described with scale of admissions having a significant role in the rate of attrition. The major contributions of this dissertation are: (1) the appropriate use of joint products in measuring educational outcomes, (2) the methodology of Bayesian econometrics in educational production.