Decision Making Under Fuzzy Environment

High competition between universities has been increasing over the years, and stimulates higher education institutions to attain higher positions in the ranking list. Ranking is an important performance indicator of university status evaluation, and therefore plays an essential role in students’ university selection. In this thesis, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) are applied for the comparison and ranking of performances of five UK universities, according to four criteria. The criteria used for the evaluation of universities’ performances are teaching, research, citations, and international outlook. The comparison matrix is used to compare criteria as well as alternatives with respect to each criterion. Consistency index and consistency ratio are calculated by using eigenvalues to check the consistency of comparison matrix and by obtaining the final priorities, ranking is possible with AHP. Eigenvalues are also calculated to check the consistency for FAHP as well as eigenvectors are calculated for ranking process. Besides these, by the calculation of coefficient of variation for all alternatives, it becomes possible to rank the universities in prioritized order with FAHP. Keywords: Ranking, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP); Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP); ranking; consistency; eigenvalue; eigenvector; coefficient of variation.