Optimal Budgetary allocation on departments of Iran's public Universities for purposes of teaching staff development: goal Programming approach

The aim of this work is to demonstrate how a Goal Programming model can be useful and operational in the process of decision-making in a university system, especially when dealing with the efficient assignment of the financial resources available among the diverse departments toward the promotion of instructional human resources. With this model, we intend to provide the governing bodies of public universities whit a valid methodology that is easily adapted and that may be implemented in any university. Within this frame work, in the present paper a model has been developed provides a mechanism for the optimal distribution of financial recourse once these total amounts are known. In particular, the study focuses on the management of funds acquired for purposes of the development and promotion of teaching and research stuff. To this end, a Goal programming model is formulated, which incorporates the concepts of efficiency, internal allocation equity paying careful attention to both teaching and research aspects of department. For the assessment of the model, our study focused on the 14 departments of Shahid Beheshti University. These departments are the most suitable functional units for this study because instruction and research in the departments of this university seem to be somehow balanced. Based on the findings of this study, resource allocation in the selected university was not optimal and proved to be at variance with university policies and objectives of human resource. This points up the fact that the use of goal programming to assignment of the resources provides an efficient mechanism which facilitates the achievement of teaching and research goals at higher education.