Although there is little empirical evidence available concerning the use of balanced
scorecard approaches in an academic environment, Kaplan and Norton (2001) refer to
its use in the administrative service units of the University of California. The balanced
scorecard concept was also strongly supported by academic participants in the cases of
Bailey et al. (1999), and O’Neil et al. (1999). Both studies comment that the approach
satisfied the need for a simple and multi-dimensional measure that could guide and
focus efforts to improve performance (Cullen et al., 2003). Therefore, the balanced
scorecard concept is adopted in this paper for measuring the performance of higher
education institutions.