Abstract:

We develop a new approach for decision making in education management. We focus on the selection of studies plan from the perspective of an academic institution. We try to develop this approach showing the benefits of establishing an ideal plan that we compare with the available alternatives. For doing this, we use different concepts found in decision theory such as the Minkowski distance, the ordered weighted averaging (OWA) operator and the interval numbers. The use of the Minkowski distance permits to make comparisons between the ideal plan and the available ones in the market. The OWA operator is an aggregation operator that provides a parameterized family of aggregation operators that includes among others the maximum, the minimum and the average criteria. And the interval numbers are a very useful technique for representing the information when the environment is very complex because it gives all the possible results from the minimum to the maximum. Therefore, it includes all the possible results that could happen in the future. For doing so, we introduce a new aggregation operator called the uncertain generalized ordered weighted averaging distance (UGOWAD) operator. It is a distance aggregation operator that uses the main characteristics of the Minkowski distance, the OWA operator and the interval numbers. We develop an illustrative example where we can see the usefulness of the UGOWAD operator for selecting studies plan in education management. The main advantage of using the UGOWAD is that we can consider a wide range of distance aggregation methods in the decision problem. Then, the decision maker gets a more complete view of the decision problem and he is able to select the alternative that better fits his interests.

Keywords:

decision making, selection of studies plan, uncertainty, minkowski distance, aggregation operators.