Non-academic staff and technical efficiency of Russian universities 2012–2021

Applied Economics. 2025.

Agasisti T., Akuneeva T., Egorov A., Platonova D., Serebrennikov P.

This paper investigates the relationship between the proportion of non-academic staff in universities

and their organizational efficiency of Russian universities. Recognizing the differing production

functions of research-intensive and teaching-intensive universities, we implement two distinct

model specifications in efficiency estimation. A novel panel conditional order-m efficiency estimator

is applied, incorporating the share of non-academic staff and the time variable (2012–2021) as

simultaneous exogenous factors. The findings demonstrate that the inclusion of these exogenous

variables affects the variance of efficiency scores differently in teaching-intensive and research-

intensive universities. For research-intensive universities, no robust evidence emerges to suggest

a statistically significant relationship between the share of non-academic staff and institutional

efficiency. In contrast, teaching-intensive universities exhibit a positive relationship between the

proportion of non-academic staff and efficiency, both in the full sample and in analyses of specific

years. An extension of the empirical analysis (possible only for 2019) reveals a positive association

between the proportion of specifically administrative staff and efficiency.

Keywords: university efficiency, conditional efficiency, University productivity, non-academic staff, administrative staff

Publication based on the results of: The formation of a national higher education system: key changes and their effects (2025)