1、中文 4160 字 本科毕业论文（设计） 外 文 翻 译 原文： A Cost Function for Higher Education in Australia (extract) 1. Introduction This study estimates a cost function for higher education in Australian universities. The estimated function is used to examine the cost of providing higher education to overseas students. In
2、 the higher education sector, production functions are useful for evaluating the structure of the industry and can serve as guides for individual institutions on policies affecting their size and scope. Moreover, in view of the relaxation of provisions under which universities can provide higher edu
3、cation to full-fee paying domestic students, information from cost functions can assist institutions to develop appropriate pricing strategies. Cost functions also provide an opportunity to evaluate the cost of providing higher education to overseas students. Higher education costs for an individual
4、 university can be established from a detailed accounting exercise in which the explicit and implicit costs allocated to courses and levels are collected. However, in obtaining the costs of overseas students, there is still be a need for a cost function because it is necessary to examine what the co
5、sts would be under alternative student numbers, that is, with and without overseas students. Some idea of the variation in costs with different numbers can be obtained by comparing universities at the same date but with different student profiles. Hence the use of cost functions provides a method fo
6、r measuring the net benefits(or costs)of the providing education to overseas students. The paper is organised as follows. Section 2 reviews some of the previous work done on the Australian higher education sector and discusses some relevant issues. Section 3 presents the basic cost function model, d
7、escribes the data and presents empirical results. Section 4 presents results from the application of the cost function, including the costs predictions for the provision of higher education for overseas students. Section 5 draws policy implications and conclusions. 2. Previous Work and Some Issues T
8、hrosby (1986)estimated the cost of providing higher education using data from 18 Australian universities for the period 1978 to 1982.This was followed by Lloyd et al.(1993) and Lloyd(1994),which defined the conditions under which the functional form of the cost function allows economies of scale and
9、 scope in the production of multiple outputs, that is research and teaching in various disciplines and at different levels. Estimates from these studies were used to analyse the impact of the amalgamations that followed the 1987 reforms. In particular, the estimated equation was used to evaluate the
10、 likely cost savings arising from the amalgamation of two or more institutions. The most recent cost function estimate for Australia is reported in Throsby and Heaton(1995).Using 1991 cross-sectional data on 42 institutions, Throsby and Heaton analysed the relationship between the operating costs of
11、 institutions and the number of students in 10 broad subject areas and three levels of studies, using a quadratic function of the student numbers(implying constant marginal costs).Their cost function was used by Baker, Creedy and Johnson(1996)to evaluate the cost of overseas students. A number of is
12、sues arise in deriving and using such a model. First, previous studies failed to account for unobserved differences between universities. Each institution has a particular structure that may make the provision of particular courses more cost efficient in one university than in others. In addition, t
13、he explanatory variables chosen may not adequately represent the characteristics of particular institutions； for example, there may be variation of quality and the proportion of resources devoted to research. The implicit assumption that quality of teaching is independent of variations in student nu
14、mbers is also made. Second, there are aggregation problems associated with the accurate specification of the variables. These occur because the choice of discipline or course level categories masks large differences between components of the aggregated discipline. For example, health includes the tr
15、aining of both high-cost doctors and relatively low-cost nurses. At the aggregate level they may be combined into a single composite group, but individual universities may specialise in either the high-cost or the low-cost product. Accordingly, their total costs will be under-or over-estimated by th
16、e use of an averaged set of parameters defined over the universities as a whole. Third, the conventional cost minimisation assumption does not apply naturally to the higher education sector when government (to a large extent)determines both the funding and the output. In fact, many universities may
17、use the same model as used by the government to determine the funding of domestic students (the Relative Funding Model)for setting fees for overseas students. In general, the first and second problems are features of the availability of appropriately disaggregated data and model specification. Preli
18、minary investigation has revealed that while finding an answer to the second problem is difficult, a more rigorous study can tackle the first. This third problem is intrinsic to the cost function methodology. The cost function approach is nonetheless a useful tool for higher education policy develop
19、ment. Universities can compare their own performance with the average performance estimated by the cost function. Universities can vary size and structure of the student body and consider the likely effect on their budget. The cost function may also be fed into the mechanism for providing funding fo
20、r domestic students through the Relative Funding Model. The cost function may also be used to evaluate new ways of reimbursing institutions and can be useful in evaluating pricing policy for domestic full-fee students. It may be used to estimate the costs and benefits of provision of higher educatio
21、n for overseas students, and thereby guide pricing policy with respect to them. 3. (ellipsis) 4. Application of the Cost Function 4.1. Total Costs In this subsection, the estimated coefficients of the chosen cost function above are used to derive estimates of total cost as defined in equations(2).Th
22、e predicted values for 1997,using data for all students, are presented in Tables 3 and 4 below. In Table 3,the universities are arranged from smallest to largest(by EFTSU load),and are presented with information on student load. Total cost figuresboth actual and predictedare also shown. The model yi
23、elds predicted values of total costs that are reasonable approximates of the actual costs, with over 70 per cent of predicted values within a 10 per cent margin of error. There appears to be a relatively constant relationship between the student load and the total cost of teaching implying that aver
24、age costs are in a tight band. This issue is explored further below. The cubic form of the cost function indicates rising costs of teaching at low student load levels, while the rate of growth gradually diminishes as student numbers rise because of gains from economies of scale. At very high student numbers, the cost function implies a renewed rapid rise in the costs
