A Multi- dimensional Evaluation Model for Higher Education

Yawen Yang ； Jiangtao Wang ； Yindi Ding ； Anna Zheng

《International Journal of Social Science and Education Research》 5卷8期 (2022/08) Pp. 813-825

https://doi.org/10.6918/IJOSSER.202208_5(8).0117

摘要

The UN interprets the meaning of sustainable education as qualified education should be provided with affordable and accessible facilities regardless of gender or disabilities; besides, learners can acquire the knowledge to enhance sustainability with the help of qualified teachers. However, as a complicated system, it is difficult to measure and evaluate the health status of a sustainable higher education system. In this paper, we establish a multi ‐ dimensional model to evaluate the health status of higher education system at the national level. The goals of our model are three‐fold:comprehensiveness, simplicity to implement; and data availability. Firstly, we propose a five‐dimensional indicator system which includes Accessibility, Affordability, Edification, Equity and Internationalization, and find corresponding indictors and data from World Bank. Then we adopt EWM‐TPOSIS method to weight and aggregate all the indicators into a final score representing the health status of a nation. Secondly, we implement the above method to 12 countries, and the resulted score ranking from highest to lowest are Russia, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Ireland, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Italy, Mexico, Columbia. We also test the sensibility of our method with Factor Analysis. The two rankings are quite different except for the top and bottom countries. It can happen because Factor Analysis eliminates some information by using principal component method. We perform a KMO and Bartlett's Test, which indicates that the indicators in our data do not have strong enough correlations, so that Factor Analysis is not the best method in this scenario, which in a way validates the EWM ‐ TPOSIS method that we adopt. Thirdly, by comparing the health score and economic development level (measured by GDP per capita), we notice that Italy is a country whose education system has room of improvements. Specifically, we identify two important areas with the necessity to improve, which are relative low higher education enrollment rate and graduation rate. We propose a targeted vision for Italy, and suggest policies towards that vision. With a time‐series analysis, we also suggest a timeline for the proposed change. Finally, we acknowledge the difficulties of change in the real world, especially with the strong impact of the current pandemic on Italy. One limitation of our analysis, given the time restraint, is that we couldn't find data of a few indicators that we would like to include in our evaluation system. To name a couple, the research level of a higher education system or the average salary level of a college graduate in a nation. By integrating more of these indicators, our evaluation system would yield more satisfactory results.

關鍵字

Higher education ； Sustainable system ； World Bank ； EWM - TPOSIS ； Factor Analysis ； Italy ； time‐series analysis

參考文獻

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