Examining provinces of Turkey in terms of their education indicators via data envelopment analysis

Determining the development levels of countries, regions or provinces is one of the most important issues. In the development of contries, the provinces constitute the basic units. Analyzing the development levels of provinces, there is a strong relationship between economical and social development levels and education level of community living there. Education is one of the factors that provides development of individual and community and contributes to socio-economic and cultural development of countries. Therefore, in this study, the efficiencies of provinces in Turkey were compared in terms of education which is an indicator of socio-cultural term using data envelopment analysis (DEA). In this study, 81 provinces were determined as Decision Making Units (DMU)s. Data analysis was made standardizing data to be more consistent statistically and eliminating the effects of magnitudes such population size and acreage. In this study, output-oriented CCR model is used to measure relative efficiency, and output-oriented BCC model was used to measure technical efficiency and scale efficiency. Furthermore, the efficiency scores were determined via EMS. According to the results of the output-oriented CCR model 40 provinces are found to be efficient, and 49 provinces are found to be efficient for output-oriented BCC model. Also, potential improvements rates for inefficient provinces are determined.