Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering

The new public management paradigm, the raise of the number of students and a stronger international competition in attracting external funds for large research projects have lead universities to increase the number and role of non-academic (i.e. administrative and technical) staff to support the efforts of the academic staff to effectively face these new and complex challenges. While the role of academic staff for university performance is clear (professors teach, do research and eventually other knowledge transfer activities), the contribution of non-academic staff instead is tricky.  Non-academic staff may be beneficial to university performance if it supports the main activities carried out by the academic staff. On the other end, it may be detrimental for university performance if it translates in an increase of administrative burden to academics that subtracts time to teaching and research. We shed new lights on this relevant topic analyzing European universities. We consider the quality of non-academic staff as an “unobserved” factor and estimate it nonparametrically. Afterwards, we assess its impact of the performance of European universities. In the conclusions we outline directions for further research.

Short Bio

Joanna Wolszczak-Derlacz is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Management and Economics, Gdańsk University of Technology, Poland, since 2016 Head of the Department of Economics. Her scientific interests focus on the theory and empirics of economic convergence, productivity and efficiency, economics of education and labour markets. In 2015, she obtained habilitation based on the two series of publications: "Efficiency and productivity of higher education institutions" and "Convergence of wages and prices".

In the period Sept 2019 – Jan 2020, she conducts research “Assessing the role of administrative staff in the (in) efficiency of higher education institutions - with the application of robust non-parametric methods” at the DIAG Department of the University “La Sapienza” in Rome under the programme of the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange.

She is a member of the Science of Science Committee of the Polish Academy of Science. In December 2018, she has been appointed to a member of the Council of the National Science Centre (NCN).