Importance-performance analysis based balanced scorecard for performance evaluation in higher education institutions: An integrated fuzzy approach

Recognizing the state of the universities and disrupting their functions by performance evaluation helps them adopt more appropriate educational, research and institutional policies to conduct a university system. In this paper, the importance of the services provided and the activities of the university are determined by means of the balanced scorecard (BSC) approach, and the performance assessment structure is implemented based on an integrated fuzzy multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) approach. For this purpose, interdependencies between BSC aspects and effective indicators weight are determined by Fuzzy Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (FDEMATEL) and Fuzzy Analytic Network Process (FANP) methods, respectively. Accordingly, the final weight of the effective indexes on the performance evaluation of university is presented and the educational income is recognized as one of the most important indicators. Finally, the priorities of universities are specified in order to improve the performance and policy making by the importance-performance analysis (IPA). Therefore, the growth of the number of students should be considered as one of the most important stages in improving university performance in the future in order to achieve educational income. Moreover, the guidelines for universities and higher education institutions are presented to identify key factors in implementing and improving performance.