Research Efficiency in Higher Education: Clustering Higher Education Systems Globally

This research aims to identify the research efficiency clusters of higher education systems (HESs) globally by comparing size-independent research inputs and outputs. The research was designed benefitting from two different approaches, correlational research to discover the individual contribution of each research output and the general survey model to define research efficiency clusters of HESs. Including 75 countries’ HESs, the data were collected from the database of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, PATSTAT of European Patent Office, and the Web of Science Core Collection records for a designated time period in terms of “per researcher rates” in each HES; 2015 for Research & Development spending, 2018 for articles and patent applications, and 2018-2019 for initially received citations. Through this dataset, regression analysis was first performed to re-calculate the research performance scores of HESs by the individual contribution of each output (patent applications, articles, and citations) eliminating the multicollinearity connections among these variables; then, cluster analysis was carried out to categorise countries in terms of the research efficiency ratios of their HES. The analysis showed four clusters of research efficiency ratios: only one country in the highest group, three in the higher group, 32 in the middle group, and 39 in the lower group. Discussing various policies and practices from HESs displaying the top research efficiency ratio in the analysis, this research presents recommendations to further improve research performance by the potential contribution of each national and international factor in the global research structure.