Studentenwerke Niedersachsen

Attemps to reduce governmental subsidies with respect to universities are evident in Germany since the last 20 years.These efforts also include university related service units like students`hostels and canteens run by nonprofit organisations called "Studentenwerke" (SW).One reason for the "untouchability" of possible inefficiencies in this sector is the assumption that the performance of SWs is not comparable due to differences in production and customer structure.This project is concerned with possible structural differences leading to different production technologies of the SWs.Additionally several input/ output models for hostels and canteens are introduced in order to put the differences in concrete terms.The models are finally applied to measure DEA (in)efficiency together with structural clustering for a sample of about 100 hostels and 50 canteens. With respect to DEA theory the models applied include increasing returns to scale, categorical and non-discretionary variables. Thus, DEA models that should be well designed to cope with the non comparability problem mentioned above,A general result is that it is possible to cluster canteens and hostels in a way accepted by the respective nonprofit managers. Possibilities and strategies to increase the performance of the units are introduced.