摘要：In the Province of Québec, public colleges depend heavily on public funding:
85% of their budget come from the Department of Education. Those institutions complain
that their financial resources are insufficient since Québec government decided to cut their
budget in the mid-90. Of course, this suppose that they are efficient, that is, there is no
waste in their use of inputs (labour, energy, equipment, etc.). In this paper, our goal is to
measure this (in)efficiency.
We evaluate the efficiency of the colleges using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) based
on micro-data. Our paper shows that the average level of inefficiency is around 10%. This
represents a potential for budget reductions of 140 millions dollars per year. We also show
that the level of inefficiency is not constant over time and that it is inversely related to
public investment. The efficiency increased in periods of budget cuts.
