AN APPLICATION OF GOAL PROGRAMMING TO ACADEMIC RESOURCE ALLOCATION PLANNING

ABSTRACT

Since the last decade, universities in Nigeria have been experiencing a progressive decline in required inputs, like funds, materials and academic staff. In spite of this, there has been a continuing rise in the demand for their services, as shown by rising student enrolment figures (Nigeria, 1981). Confronted with such a problem, universities require more than ever before, formal decision models for planning the allocation of their scarce resources as efficiently as possible. This study applies goal programming for planning the academic resource allocation--a major input--of the university of Ibadan for 1982/83-l~86/87. The goal programming model used modifies that of Schroeder (1974) by defining explicitly a student enrolment goal and introducing an academic staff level goal, which is designed to cater for academic staff advancement, at least according to the historical rate in each faculty. Furthermore, it redefines the academic rank distribution goal to incorporate the controversial 30%-40%-30% rank distribution ratios introduced In 1981. The study seeks principally to determine the distribution of academic staff by rank, in each faculty/college, over a five-year period and recommend the planning implications of such a distribution. In addition, it attempts to find the effects of dropping the controversial rank distribution goal on the model solution. The model was solved using the Revised Simplex Goal Programming Algorithm developed by Kang (l9~02 on an I.B.M. VM 370 computer in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, U.S.A.