Evaluating the Impact of the Bologna Process on the Efficiency Convergence of Italian Universities: A Non-parametric Frontier Approach

The Bologna Process (BP) promoted a series ofwide-ranging reforms of higher education (HE) systems in orderto improve the quality of teaching activities across Europe. Thispaper evaluates the effect of these reforms on the teachingefficiency of Italian universities during the period 2000–2010.Weemploy bootstrapped data envelopment analysis algorithmsto assess teaching efficiency. Then, we examine the convergenceof the Italian HE system using several panel data estimators.We find clear evidence that Italian universities havebecome more efficient over time, consistent with the goals of theBP, but that substantial improvement mainly occurs during theinitial period of implementation. Our estimates also show aprocess of convergence in the performance of the Italian HEsystem, but we find strong evidence of persistent gaps at bothuniversity and regional levels. These empirical findings arerobust to an alternative estimator, the empirical strategy, and theemployed sample.