Performance Evaluation in Distance Education by Using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and TOPSIS Methods

Depending on the global world conditions and technological developments, the education and job status of people are constantly changing. In the competitive environment of today, as in many other sectors, it has become necessary to compete with the competitors in the education sector and to open up to new markets. Universities are the most important education centers where qualified human resources are trained. Universities offer different types of education along with people’s lifestyles and technology. Distance education has become increasingly widespread in recent years as it can meet human needs. It has become necessary for universities to evaluate their performance to compete with their competitors in distance education. In recent years, data envelopment analysis (DEA) and technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solutions (TOPSIS) are widely used in performance evaluation. In this study, it has been aimed at performance evaluation of distance education departments of public universities in Turkey for the 2018–2019 academic year by using the DEA method and the TOPSIS method. In the study, it has been also aimed to compare and rank the efficient decision-making units as a result of efficiency measurement among themselves. The study has been carried out using 6 input and 4 output variables. As a result of the efficiency analysis using the CCR-DEA model, 7 universities were efficient and 49 universities not. Later, the efficient universities have been ranked using the super efficiency CCR-DEA model and TOPSIS method.