Explaining estimated economies of scale and scope in higher education: A meta-regression analysis

Numerous studies have investigated economies of scale and scope in higher education as a means of providing public and private providers of college and university teaching and research and their stakeholders with knowledge of the cost structures that underpin provision in this economically and socially important sector. However, debate continues on the precise nature of these economies of scale and scope given the mixed findings, largely because of the significant institutional and other differences in the chosen context. To address this, we employ meta-regression analysis to explore not only the overall level of scale and scope economies across nearly 50 international studies conducted in Australia, the US, the UK, Italy, China, and others since the early 1980s, but also those factors that potentially affect their presence in the higher education sector. Our findings suggest that functional form, allowances for managerial efficiency, and the specification of teaching outputs have a significant impact on the estimated scale economies. In contrast, for scope economies, the key factors appear to be when the age of the analysis, the diversity of the sample, and the national level of economic development in the chosen context.