Evaluation and Ranking of Accredited Universities in Afghanistan Using an Integrated Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP)–TOPSIS Model

Abstract

Ranking and evaluating universities are important for supporting institutional development, increasing higher education quality, and facilitating evidence-based decision making. However, a comprehensive quantitative framework for ranking accredited universities in Afghanistan using official institutional data has not been previously reported. This study proposes an integrated Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP)–TOPSIS model to evaluate and rank accredited universities in Afghanistan.  A total of ten accredited public and private universities from different geographical regions were selected based on the official accreditation reports of the Ministry of Higher Education. Institutional data were collected from the Directorate of Quality Assurance and Accreditation, the Directorate of Planning and Policy, the Directorate of Research, Compilation and Translation, and the Ministry's Academic Scientific Journals portal. Five main criteria and eleven sub-criteria were established from the collected data. The relative importance of the evaluation criteria was determined using Buckley's FAHP based on pairwise comparison judgments provided by twelve experts, and the resulting weights were incorporated into the TOPSIS model to rank the selected universities.  The FAHP results indicated that Number of Academic Staff, Strategic Plan, and Academic Journals, respectively, received the highest global weights which means that these criteria had the highest impact on the overall university ranking. The result of TOPSIS analysis revealed that Kabul University was ranked first, followed by Nangarhar University and Herat University, and the last university, which was ranked lowest was Alfalah University. Based on the results of this evaluation, Kabul University has been identified as the top ranked institution among the evaluated universities in this assessment, which can be used to evaluate the universities that are accredited in Afghanistan in a transparent, systematic and evidence-based manner, and can contribute to the institutional benchmarking, quality assurance, strategic planning, and higher education institutional policy making processes in Afghanistan.