Multiple criteria decision‐making techniques in higher education

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature which focuses on four major higher education decision problems. These are: resource allocation; performance measurement; budgeting; and scheduling.

Design/methodology/approach

Related articles appearing in the international journals from 1996 to 2005 are gathered and analyzed so that the following three questions can be answered: “What kind of decision problems were paid most attention to?”; “Were the multiple criteria decision‐making techniques prevalently adopted?”; and “What are the inadequacies of these approaches?”

Findings

Based on the inadequacies, some improvements and possible future work are recommended, and a comprehensive resource allocation model is developed taking account of these factors. Finally, a new knowledge‐based goal programming technique which integrates some operations of analytic hierarchy process is proposed to tackle the model intelligently.

Originality/value

Higher education has faced the problem of budget cuts or constrained budgets for the past 30 years. Managing the process of the higher education system is, therefore, a crucial and urgent task for the decision makers of universities in order to improve their performance or competitiveness.

Citation

Ho, W., Dey, P.K. and Higson, H.E. (2006), "Multiple criteria decision‐making techniques in higher education", International Journal of Educational Management, Vol. 20 No. 5, pp. 319-337. https://doi.org/10.1108/09513540610676403