Selecting university undergraduate student activities via compromised-analytical hierarchy process and 0-1 integer programming to maximize SETARA points

Abstract

Prioritizing and making decisions on what student activities to be selected and conducted to fulfill the aspiration of a university as translated in its strategic plan must be executed with transparency and accountability. It is becoming even more crucial, particularly for universities in Malaysia with the recent budget cut imposed by the Malaysian government. In this paper, we illustrated how 0-1 integer programming (0-1 IP) model was implemented to select which activities among the forty activities proposed by the student body of Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) to be implemented for the 2017/2018 academic year. Two different models were constructed. The first model was developed to determine the minimum total budget that should be given to the student body by the UUM management to conduct all the activities that can fulfill the minimum targeted number of activities as stated in its strategic plan. On the other hand, the second model was developed to determine which activities to be selected based on the total budget already allocated beforehand by the UUM management towards fulfilling the requirements as set in its strategic plan. The selection of activities for the second model, was also based on the preference of the members of the student body whereby the preference value for each activity was determined using Compromised-Analytical Hierarchy Process. The outputs from both models were compared and discussed. The technique used in this study will be useful and suitable to be implemented by organizations with key performance indicator-oriented programs and having limited budget allocation issues.