The application of an optimal decision-making model within a higher education subsystem

UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Dale Cornish Cooper (Creator)
Institution
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
Advisor
Donald W. Russell

Abstract: Resource planning has become a fundamental activity of administrators at all levels in higher education. The decision-making process which surrounds the creation and justification of budgets can clearly benefit from the application of systems analysis and quantitative methods. Such techniques not only force a decision maker to set up an explicit priority system of goals, but these techniques show how optimally to achieve such goals within a set of limiting conditions (constraints). The resource management model developed here is a single-period linear goal programming model with a multi-objective non-Archimedean structure used in connection with the computer program MPSX and a prepackaged linear program, SIMPLEX. A planning horizon was limited to a time span of one year and involved only one of the schools in a medium-size urban university. Computer runs revealed that the "ideal" mix of faculty, assistants, and staff necessary to satisfy student credit hour demand would require the doubling of the salary budget, and was infeasible. Other ordering of priorities indicated the best faculty, assistants, and staff mix within constraints.

Additional Information

Publication
Dissertation
Language: English
Date: 1977
Subjects
Education, Higher $x Aims and objectives
Universities and colleges $x Planning
Universities and colleges $x Administration

Email this document to