Performance-based resource allocation for higher education institutions in China

How to allocate limited resource to higher education institutions has always been a critical problem with significant social and economic relevance. Researchers and educational administrators have long proposed that resource allocation should be linked to performance. In this paper, we develop a performance-based method for a central planner to allocate research funding to different universities to better stimulate the research output. The method builds on existing works on resource allocation via efficiency analysis. The method takes multiple dimensions of research performance into account, including number of publications, number of patents, and revenue from knowledge transfer. We apply the method to a set of 64 major universities in China based on performance in 2014–2016. The application is particularly pertinent at the moment, since the Chinese government is developing a new funding program called the “double first-class” plan, which features performance-based funding as a central pillar of government funding.     

University planning,decentralization and resource allocation

This paper proposes a system of resource allocation in universities which addresses both the problem of useful simulation of alternatives and efficient substitution of resources. It is the authors' view that the reasons why various university planning models proposed in the last few years have not been found useful in practice is that they take inadequate account of the decentralized nature of decisionmaking within universities. In this regard the three main points of the paper are: (1) university planning models should have flexible aggregation categories which can be determined and re-adjusted by the decisionmaker as he uses it; (2) resource constraints in university planning models should be flexible and negotiable, and negotiation over resources should be part of the analyst's domain of inquiry; (3) planning in universities must take into account the problem of introducing incentives which cause the behavior of individuals within the university to be directed to the needs of the institution's clienteles.     

Inter-threshold resource planning for public higher educational systems

Efforts to design comprehensive systems of long-range resource planning for public colleges and universities in the United States are frustrated in the sense that most states follow a social demand approach to educational planning. Literally thousands of decision makers—including students, parents, formal administrators and faculty members-affect the overall behavior of the system. Nevertheless, more and more states are creating centralized higher educational coordinating agencies to conduct long-range planning and to recommend policies for the future development of the higher educational system. This paper describes research which has attempted to link together three decision thresholds in the resource planning process. These are (a) academic departments or colleges which are combined into (b) a total college or university, which is one part of (c) a state system of higher education containing several colleges and universities.     

Disaster planning and resource allocation in health services

The increasing prevalence of natural disasters, environmental tragedies, and depraved human behavior has generated excessive costs in both human and material resources at a time when cost-efficiency and control is continually emphasized by managed care contracts, business, and government agencies. As a result, increasing pressure has been placed on hospital material managers to do more with less, while also providing the necessary resources to respond efficiently and effectively during an emergency. A successful comprehensive, risk-based emergency management program of preparedness, response, and recovery will reduce the loss of life and resources.     

A spatial interaction model for the allocation of higher education enrollments

The purpose of this paper is to present the results of research efforts in developing an enrollment forecasting system for the State of Ohio's higher education system. The model constructed employs the concept of spatial interaction in attempting to determine the “market share” which each of the 60 competing public colleges would be able to attract each year. An analogy is drawn between the educational process of college selection and the attraction to shopping centers of residents in surrounding communities. The article also addresses itself to the subjects of data bases, cost function development and the forecasting of actual enrollments at each rank for each institution.     

A model for resource allocation in complex hierarchies

Most models of resource allocation activity usually assume either a black box or a simple pyramidal hierarchy of black boxes as the organizational context for decision making. However, there are a number of resource allocation activities that take place in more complex hierarchies. These cases have been slighted by researchers, in part, because of a lack of practicable models. This paper presents a multiple-criterion resource allocation model specifically directed towards non-pyramidal hierarchies and other more complex organizational structures. A number of examples are discussed and a numerical example is presented.     

A model for optimal resource allocation in the capital budgeting framework

Moder and Nicki (MN) presented in a recent issue of this journal a resource allocation model in the context of an urban renewal framework. This model was developed under “certainty” assumption. The present paper extends the MN model to “risk” conditions in the capital budgeting framework of a firm. The paper defines an appropriate measure of risk and explicitly introduces the possibilities of borrowing and lending in the model. Further analysis shows that slight variations of the constraints in the model yield important long-run policy guidelines to the management for resource allocation purposes.     

A data-driven methodology for supporting resource planning of health services

In recent years, healthcare systems have been forced to better organize their services in the final attempt to maximize both care effectiveness and efficiency. In particular, emergent trends are prompting hospitals to pay more attention to the effective and efficient planning of resources and to the creation of patient-centred services, in which current activities and resources are reorganized around patients.This paper proposes a process mining based methodology to systematically support the resource planning of health services. Specifically, combining Time-Driven Activity Based Costing and process mining approaches, it automatically identifies the patient flow and analytically evaluates activities, service times, and resource consumptions for a specific class (-es) of patients (e.g., a DRG, patients with specific medical condition, etc.). Thus, it allows to reliably estimate the expected resource consumptions for the patient group under investigation. Thanks to process mining, the method overcomes the limitations of existing quantitative approaches that are often time-consuming, based on subjective observations, and too case specific. The method was applied to a real case study of lung cancer patients in an Italian hospital.     

An aggregative resource allocation model for hospital administration

One of the most pressing social problems in the United States today is the delivery of adequate health care services to every American. Despite the phenomenal rate of increase in hospital costs, the quality and depth of hospital service have been far from satisfactory. Yet, systematic analysis of hospital administration has been generally neglected by decision scientists, hospital administrators, and economists. This paper presents a methodology for an aggregative resource allocation in hospital administration. More specifically, it applies goal programming to design a general model and demonstrates its practical application for an optimum resource allocation in hospital administration through an empirical study.     

A model for total quality management in higher education

Total quality management (TQM) is widely recognised as a management philosophy for improving customer satisfaction and organisational performance. However, there is no consensus over the critical success factors of TQM, in particular, in higher education (HE) and developing countries. Literature shows mixed results on the success and applicability of TQM principles in education, thus, underlining the need to revisit the application of TQM principles in HE. This paper identifies the critical success factors of TQM in Pakistani universities. Data was collected from faculty members of universities through questionnaires. The findings reveal that ‘leadership’, ‘vision’, ‘measurement and analysis’, ‘process control and evaluation’, ‘programs design and resources allocation’ and ‘stakeholder focus’ emerge as the critical success factors of TQM in HE. The findings have implications at macro, meso, and micro levels of HE.     

Investment-decision criteria and resource allocation in transition

This paper develops an analytical framework tointegrate static and dynamic effects of theoreticallyrelevant and practically applied investment-decisioncriteria on the marginal rate of substitution betweeninvestment and labour. The new propositions are relatedto the ranking of relative present value, Kalecki'sindex of efficiency and the static version ofrecoupment period criteria. Investors in post-communisteconomies have switched from the recoupment period tothe criteria based on discounting. This is aninstitutional change typical for these economies. Itimplies a choice of techniques with lower investmentintensity, which is best supported by government'spolicy to promote labour mobility.     

A computational approach to resource allocation in spatial urban models

This paper synthesizes and generalizes recent literature on the use of ‘fixed point methods’ to compute approximate numerical solutions to general equilibrium models of urban land use. We show how a broad array of spatial urban models, including ones involving endogenously generated externalities, can be studied within the context of a single unifying computational framework.     

Professional education in urban planning: A framework for growth

Expanded interest in socio-economic problems have created new opportunities for the urban planning profession. Because of their emphasis on physical and land-use aspects of the city, traditional educational programs in urban planning have been unable to deal adequately with these new opportunities. Changes in program orientation and emphasis to meet these new challenges have started to take place in some urban planning departments. It remains to be seen how effective some of these changes will be over the long run.

This paper considers some current aspects of urban planning education. The role of professional education in our society is examined along with the role of science in planning. Based on this analysis, a framework is proposed for the future growth of professional education in urban planning. Because of its strong orientation towards a “science of planning”, this proposal appears to be somewhat different than other changes currently being considered in some urban planning programs.     

A case study of exploiting enterprise resource planning requirements

The requirements engineering (RE) processes have become a key to conceptualising corporate-wide integrated solutions based on packaged enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. The RE literature has mainly focused on procuring the most suitable ERP package. Little is known about how an organisation exploits the chosen ERP RE model to frame the business application development. This article reports an exploratory case study of a key tenet of ERP RE adoption, namely that aligning business applications to the packaged RE model leads to integral practices and economic development. The case study analysed a series interrelated pilot projects developed for a business division of a large IT manufacturing and service company, using Oracle's appl1ication implementation method (AIM). The study indicated that AIM RE improved team collaboration and project management experience, but needed to make hidden assumptions explicit to support data visibility and integrity. Our study can direct researchers towards rigorous empirical evaluations of ERP RE adoption, collect experiences and lessons learned for practitioners, and help generate more effective and mature processes when exploiting ERP RE methods.