A simulation-based analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method for fund allocation assessment

The effectiveness of government financing is a challenge in various industries, including higher education universities. The source of funding and the size of the resources are the key determinants of quality education. The problems arise in multi-criteria decision-making, where many subjective opinions are needed from the experts. It is therefore necessary to prioritize the limited budget available for important criteria. On the other hand, multi-criteria evaluation leads to technically rigorous and enlightened university budget decisions. This paper proposes the exploitation of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) in budget allocation at one of the public universities in Malaysia. This study's participants were eight top management experts in managing expenditure at the faculty level. The findings showed that the most significant factors in deciding budget allocations are Teaching and Learning (0.30) and Maintenance (0.26). Furthermore, the most dominant sub-criteria were laboratory and equipment devices (S4) and training and conferences (SIO) with a weighted mean of 0.682 and 0.664 respectively. The weights were aggregated by the geometric mean and its median, as well as the simulated mean and its median, which showed deviating results and rank reversals. The geometric mean weights differed significantly. In contrast, the aggregation using measures of the median was similar to the geometric median, with only a few rankings criteria differing. This highlights that the median score is significant in weights calculation.