Abstract
This paper evaluates the inefficiency of adult education programs. Using an advanced four-component stochastic frontier model on Belgian adult education data, we distinguish between persistent and transient inefficiency of adult education programs. Whereas persistent inefficiency is structural and difficult to tackle because of its time-invariant nature, transient inefficiency can be eliminated somewhat easily without a major structural change. Thus, reduction in different inefficiency components may require different policy measures. Our results indicate that despite the presence of persistent inefficiency, the overall inefficiency is mainly driven by the transient component, and hence, at the control of the adult education management. The findings suggest that social interaction is relevant in adult education as both more sessions and more learners per program increase educational efficiency. Moreover, adult education programs seem to be particularly useful for young less-educated learners.
Highlights
A highly skilled and well-trained workforce is essential for economic growth (Hanushek and Woessmann 2008)
Decomposing the overall inefficiency reveals that about 5 percentage points of the inefficiency are on average due to structural differences between the programs, whereas about 7 percentage points are at the discretion of the adult education management
We found that adult education programs could, given the available resources, improve their efficiency by 12% on average
Summary
A highly skilled and well-trained workforce is essential for economic growth (Hanushek and Woessmann 2008). About 14% of the adult population aged 25 to 64 dropped out of high school in the OECD countries in 2017 (OECD 2020). The original version of this article was revised: The affiliation of the authors “Deni Mazrekaj & Kristof De Witte” was incorrectly published. The data for this study are protected by a confidentiality agreement and we are precluded from sharing the data with others. Interested readers can contact the corresponding author for information on how to obtain access to the data and the code. Extended author information available on the last page of the article
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