Identifying And Ranking the Factors Affecting the Cultural Excellence of The Higher Education Institutions, Using the Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Approach (AHP-TOPSIS)

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify and rank the factors affecting the cultural excellence of university, using multi-criteria decision-making techniques in Guilan Province. The study is an applied that has an exploratory and descriptive nature. The statistical population includes 3663 experts, professors, and managers of the Islamic Azad University branches, Payam Noor University, and Guilan University. According to Morgan table, 331 people were selected as the sample size and the initial questionnaire was stratified-randomly distributed. Also, the opinions of 15 experts were used to evaluate the factors in the TOPSIS and AHP models. The instrument for data collection is researcher-made and standard questionnaires, whose validity and reliability have been confirmed through content validity, construct validity and Cronbach's reliability coefficient, respectively. In this regard, descriptive analysis, structural equations and AHP-TOPSIS multi-criteria decision-making techniques were used to rank the research variables. The results obtained from the opinions of experts and stakeholders of universities using multi-criteria decision-making methods showed that "quality" with a weight ratio of 0.274 has the highest priority. Also, "Professional competence culture of professors" with a weight ratio of 0.185, "Imitation of the myths of universities" with a weight ratio of 0.116 , "Management model" with a weight ratio of 0.106 , "Learning" with a weight ratio 0.099, "regional participation" with a weight ratio of 0.060, "university communication culture with stakeholders" with a weight ratio of 0.043, "empowerment" with a weight ratio of 0.038 , "intellectual capital culture" with the weight ratio of 0.030 , "research" with the weight ratio of 0.026, and finally the factor of "disciplinary culture" with the weight ratio of 0.025 are in the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, the seventh, the eighth, the ninth, the tenth and the last priority, respectively.