The paper presents the most comprehensive and large-scale global study to date on how higher education students perceived the use of ChatGPT in early 2024. With a sample of 23,218 students from 109 countries and territories, the study reveals that students primarily used ChatGPT for brainstorming, summarizing texts, and finding research articles, with a few using it for professional and creative writing. They found it useful for simplifying complex information and summarizing content, but less reliable for providing information and supporting classroom learning, though some considered its information clearer than that from peers and teachers. Moreover, students agreed on the need for AI regulations at all levels due to concerns about ChatGPT promoting cheating, plagiarism, and social isolation. However, they believed ChatGPT could potentially enhance their access to knowledge and improve their learning experience, study efficiency, and chances of achieving good grades. While ChatGPT was perceived as effective in potentially improving AI literacy, digital communication, and content creation skills, it was less useful for interpersonal communication, decision-making, numeracy, native language proficiency, and the development of critical thinking skills. Students also felt that ChatGPT would boost demand for AI-related skills and facilitate remote work without significantly impacting unemployment. Emotionally, students mostly felt positive using ChatGPT, with curiosity and calmness being the most common emotions. Further examinations reveal variations in students’ perceptions across different socio-demographic and geographic factors, with key factors influencing students’ use of ChatGPT also being identified. Higher education institutions’ managers and teachers may benefit from these findings while formulating the curricula and instructions/regulations for ChatGPT use, as well as when designing the teaching methods and assessment tools. Moreover, policymakers may also consider the findings when formulating strategies for secondary and higher education system development, especially in light of changing labor market needs and related digital skills development.

The growing risk of climate change caused by the emission of greenhouse gases poses new challenges to contemporary countries. The development of economies is usually related to increasing levels of greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, the question arises whether it is possible to achieve sustainable economic and financial development and simultaneously reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This paper assumes it is possible if energy efficiency is increased. The aim of the paper is to show the link between energy efficiency and sustainable economic and financial development in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries for the period 2000–2018 by using data envelopment analysis (DEA) and regression analysis. The results show a slight upward trend of total factor energy efficiency (TFEE) in OECD countries for the analysed period; however, there is a difference in TFEE levels. Developed OECD countries have higher TFEE levels than developing OECD countries. The links between total factor energy efficiency and sustainable economic and financial development reveal different impacts depending on the variables taken into consideration.

This paper proposes an approach that combines data envelopment analysis (DEA) with the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and conjoint analysis, as multi-criteria decision-making methods to evaluate teachers’ performance in higher education. This process of evaluation is complex as it involves consideration of both objective and subjective efficiency assessments. The efficiency evaluation in the presence of multiple different criteria is done by DEA and results heavily depend on their selection, values, and the weights assigned to them. Objective efficiency evaluation is data-driven, while the subjective efficiency relies on values of subjective criteria usually captured throughout the survey. The conjoint analysis helps with the selection and determining the relative importance of such criteria, based on stakeholder preferences, obtained as an evaluation of experimentally designed hypothetical profiles. An efficient experimental design can be either symmetric or asymmetric depending on the structure of criteria covered by the study. Obtained importance might be a guideline for selecting adequate input and output criteria in the DEA model when assessing teachers’ subjective efficiency. Another reason to use conjoint preferences is to set a basis for weight restrictions in DEA and consequently to increase its discrimination power. Finally, the overall teacher’s efficiency is an AHP aggregation of subjective and objective teaching and research efficiency scores. Given the growing competition in the field of education, a higher level of responsibility and commitment is expected, and it is therefore helpful to identify weaknesses so that they can be addressed. Therefore, the evaluation of teachers’ efficiency at the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Organizational Sciences illustrates the usage of the proposed approach. As results, relatively efficient and inefficient teachers were identified, the reasons and aspects of their inefficiency were discovered, and rankings were made.

This paper aims to develop a Waste Management Composite Index (WMCI) as a Circular Economy (CE) indicator by using a DEA-based model. This approach will enable making a mutual comparison, i.e. comparative analysis of the countries CE performances. Even though many countries have already accomplished a great deal in terms of the CE, there are still numerous of those that have not progressed much, finding themselves at the very beginning of the process. For that matter, the development of the indicators would help monitor changes during the transition process and while shifting to the CE model. In this paper, a tailor-made DEA model is created to fit a two-layer composite index WMCI comprising of eight relevant sub-indicators. The model is applied for the comparison of the 26 European Union (EU) countries. The obtained results could help maintain the countries informed about their position on the ranking list, alongside the level of their implementation of the CE with guidelines and recommendations for possible future development in this area.