Decision analysis view of higher education planning activities of admission and recourses allocation in Oman

Various activities of planning take place at most colleges and universities such as academic planning, enrollment planning, human resources planning, budget planning, facilities planning, campus master planning, and so on. The concern that this paper raises is on how effective is these planning activities. The paper provides managerial insights that may guide planner in two main activities: admission and recourses allocation. The insights were generated using two decision analytic models. The first model examines the Higher Education Admission Center in Oman which is responsible to enroll students to higher education institutions. However, the enrollment decision in which student enroll in which higher education institution needs is based on student competitive score. This score is calculated as weighted average of students marks in subjects. However, the models gives insights to students and parents on certain findings that can help them guide their effort. Also it gives insights to the Center on the weights associated with formula of this score. The second analytic model simulates about 200 thousands scenarios on academic resources (number of faculty) allocation given certain input factors such as faculty load, class size, number of courses per year, duration of the degree offered. The papers highlights certain findings such as: class size and faculty member load (number of course per year) have an exponential decreasing function in the number of academic staff. There are significant variation on the number of required academic stafffor different scenarios which suggest that higher education institution planners should consider these variations.