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A Multicriteria Goal Programming Model for Ranking Universities

Author

Listed:
  • Fernando García

    (Department of Economics and Social Sciences, Universitat Politècnica de València, 46022 Valencia, Spain
    These authors contributed equally to this work.)

  • Francisco Guijarro

    (Research Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, 46022 Valencia, Spain
    These authors contributed equally to this work.
    Current address: Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Camí de Vera s/n, 46022 Valencia, Spain.)

  • Javier Oliver

    (Department of Economics and Social Sciences, Universitat Politècnica de València, 46022 Valencia, Spain
    These authors contributed equally to this work.)

Abstract

This paper proposes the use of a goal programming model for the objective ranking of universities. This methodology has been successfully used in other areas to analyze the performance of firms by focusing on two opposite approaches: (a) one favouring those performance variables that are aligned with the central tendency of the majority of the variables used in the measurement of the performance, and (b) an alternative one that favours those different, singular, or independent performance variables. Our results are compared with the ranking proposed by two popular World University Rankings, and some insightful differences are outlined. We show how some top-performing universities occupy the best positions regardless of the approach followed by the goal programming model, hence confirming their leadership. In addition, our proposal allows for an objective quantification of the importance of each variable in the performance of universities, which could be of great interest to decision-makers.

Suggested Citation

  • Fernando García & Francisco Guijarro & Javier Oliver, 2021. "A Multicriteria Goal Programming Model for Ranking Universities," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(5), pages 1-17, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jmathe:v:9:y:2021:i:5:p:459-:d:504784
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Antonio Jiménez-Martín, 2022. "Special Issue “Recent Advances and Applications in Multi Criteria Decision Analysis”," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 10(13), pages 1-3, July.

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