From the viewpoint of productivity management, this research aims to analyze and compare the performance of the knowledge industry as well as to develop productivity management models for academic systems of higher education. According to the scope of the academic systems of higher education, this study first probes into the input-output measurement of such systems Then, the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method is applied to calculate the weights of measurable indices along with the adoption of the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method for the evaluation and improvement process Finally, a case study of academic systems is used to validate and illustrate the productivity management models for the knowledge industry.