A Decision Support System for Funds Management in a Public University

Senior administrators at public universities spend a great deal of time attempting to manage university funds. As the portion of total operations supported by state allocations has decreased, the number of sources of funding has been expanded by universities. This has led to a vastly more complex funds management problem for officials of public universities. The president and senior financial officer require up-to-date information on the status of university funds in terms of availability from numerous sources and applications to various uses over time. This need is more critical than ever due to legal, contractual, and legislated restrictions related to the uses of funds from the various sources. Assistance is also needed for the process of planning the allocation of funds from the various sources to potential uses over time. This paper reports on a computer based decision support system developed and implemented at a large public university to provide senior university administrators with up-to-date information on the status of funds, by source and use over time, and an interactive multicriteria model embedded within the overall computer package to assist university administrators in decision making regarding the allocation of funds from sources to uses over several time periods.