Operations Research Models in Higher Education

Seminar at RUTCOR, February, 19, 2009

Zilla Sinuany-Stern

Visiting professor at RUTCOR, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

Ben Gurion University of the Negev

Ariel University Center of Samaria

The presentation is divided into two parts: In the first part, various OR applications in higher education management and operations are presented in short. In the second part, we present a new quadratic model for allocating operational budget in nonprofit organizations. The allocations for each organizational unit have lower and upper bounds. The model is applicable in the nonparametric case, when the functional relationship between outputs and inputs is fuzzy, and the outputs are vague. The objective function is to minimize the weighted sum of the quadratic deviations of each allocation from its bounds. The model with its variants was actually used for allocating budget in various university settings.