Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is usefull to assess an efficiency of HEIs but as far as I know there are not to many papers on the implementation of DEA to assess and compare national system of HE. Do you know any papers on that subject?
There is a lot of literature on this topic. I followed this chronology:
1. Comparing University Departments, J E Beasley, OMEGA, 1990
2. Measuring Technical Efficiency in Research of State Colleges and
Universities in Region XI Using Data Envelopment Analysis
by Ed D. Cruz 2004
3. An application of the Data Envelopment Analysis methodology in the performance assessment of the Zaragoza University departments, by Emilio Martin,
4. Assessment of academic departments efficiency using data envelopment analysis, bySalah R agha et al, Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management, 2011
5. Fuzzy efficiency measures in fuzzy DEA/AR with application to university libraries by Liu and Chuang, Expert systems with applications,2009.