Abstract:

Nowadays universities are complex organizations where processes and information flows management is viewed with great interest, the optimization thereof being considered a key objective. As with any other management system, the computerization of the university management system leads to the decentralization and optimization of the information flows as well as to better management of the resources involved in this process (Brynjolfsson, 2003), having agreed the idea that IT investments positively affect the organizational performance (Bulchand-Gidumal & Melián-González, 2011, Kobelsky et al., 2008). Therefore, universities have started investing in integrated information systems for university management (Holm, T., et al. , 2014). As they are integrated systems, they encompass all the activities of a university: admissions, curricula, syllabus, mobility, student assessment, graduation, financial data, budgets, social activity, research etc. These data can be used in integrated analysis modules based on established technologies such as OLAP, Data Mining, etc., or for various statistical analyses useful both to public and universities, students or teachers.

This paper presents the way the university management system architecture was structured in the Bucharest University of Economic Studies in Romania and how certain information flows were reengineered so that they may correspond to a modern university management based on the decentralization of the information processes and resource optimization. This system is designed in-house by a European-funded project (HRD).
This paper also proposes a model for measuring the performance of university study programs based on a set of performance indicators that is based on the quantitative statistical analysis. The model data may be found in all university management information systems operating in universities, which helps the rapid use of this model. The elaborated case study tests the proposed model, based on the data available in the integrated information system for university management from the Bucharest University of Economic Studies in Romania. It was considered the performance assessment for the graduation and master study programs during 2009-2014. The case study results show that the proposed model and the results from testing, are an important part of the complex of factors usable in the assessing and classifying university study programs.
The main limitations of research concern the heterogeneity and variety of the study programs even from the same university and the difficulty of generating a ranking thereof (R. Lukman et al., 2010). However, the proposed model is remarkable especially by the comparison of the performance of a study program for graduation years from one year to another, where the specified limits do not apply.

Keywords:

University management system, study programs, performance measurement.