A System Dynamics Model for Determining Educational Capacity of Higher Education Institutions

Abstract

Managing university academic resources is a complex administrative problem. Typically, the admission capacity for a degree program is decided based on the availability of lecturers, total enrolled students, and the available facilities in the university. The common formula used is the lecturer to student ratio. But often, the decision is either based on short term requirements which lacks the bird eye's view on the whole resource elements and their synergetic relations. Imperative actions should be taken by universities towards balancing the educational capacity based on the universities' main key performance index of academic activities. Accordingly, universities should efficiently manage their academic resources systematically and strategically. This paper studies the determining factors that form the basis of a decision support system for meeting the supply and demand of an academic program, which directly contributes to efficient resource management. A system dynamics (SD) model is constructed for this purpose.