A comparative efficiency analysis of public expenditure on higher education in Turkey and European Union countries

Higher education institutions have been the compelling forces of modern society in which competitive powers are measured by ?social and human capital? and individual economic powers are operationalized through ?knowledge and education levels?. The higher education services around the world are mainly financed by public funds. Restructuring through transparency, efficiency, productivity and quality values in public sector by globalization has also affected the making of higher education institutions. The higher education public funds has constrained by the recently experienced crises along with the opening of universities through industrial cooperation, international formations, corporate universities, entrepreneurship universities has contributed to the increases of private funding. There comes the effective use problematic of limited public funds at the public higher education institutions at this point.While public provision of social benefits in an effective sense and the unpricability of pure public goods pose themselves as problems, public expenditure on higher education makes possible an efficiency analysis. Departing this very point, drawing from only Turkish case primarily along with the cases from EU countries and Turkish case as whole in term public expenditure on higher education, an efficiency analysis based on two different groups will be subsequented by a discussion of the direction and importance of impact scores by the aid of revealed scores of efficiency analysis.The findings of the analysis in harmony with the findings of the literature have been found to be meaningful indicating an increase in the public funds on higher education institutions shall have an important impact in a negative way. Independent variables added into the study titled "project allowance granted to the public higher education institutions" and "per student institutional expenditures" have contributed to positive impact of importance differently than the existing literature.