Decomposition of research inefficiency of selected public universities in Iran

Governments are the main funder of universities. The university as a multi-mission institution has a lot of heterogeneity, nevertheless, the government should take into account the multi-tasking and these heterogeneities in resource allocation. This paper aims to indicate that the research performance is different between universities and their field of sciences, and thereby resources should be allocated differently. In this paper, the inefficiency of resource allocation evaluate at the level of the university and the field of science. To achieve these goals, the research performance of a sample of comprehensive public universities and their field of sciences is evaluated by utilizing a multi-step data envelopment analysis approach. The findings results show that the government not only should consider the mechanism of resource allocation between universities but also should pay attention to the differences between the field of sciences. Results indicate that in the sample, about 30% of the resource inefficiency is related to the university level and 70% is due to inefficiency within the field of sciences. Therefore, policymakers should take into account the heterogeneity of the universities and the field of sciences to improve research performance.