ABSTRACT
The university sector is differentiated from the other types of educational institutions in that it is involved in the joint production of research and teaching. Whilst there are some university institutions that are almost entirely devoted to research, and some almost entirely to teaching, most involve a mix of activities. Clearly, the dividing line between research and teaching is blurred: for example, is the supervision of doctoral students and postgraduates in general counted as primarily one of teaching or of research? However, we follow most authors in viewing the dichotomy as useful. Joint production poses particular problems for outcome measurement: there is both the issue of how you measure the two types of outcome individually, and then how you combine these measures if some notion of overall efficiency is required. This chapter is intended as a non-technical introduction to the topic of outcome measures in higher education. More comprehensive and detailed economic analyses of higher educuation can be found in Johnes and Taylor (1990) and Johnes (1993).
