Tertiary Education Faculty Planning: An Application of a Substantially New Direct Control Model

In this paper, an absorbing Markov chain representing the stocks and flows of undergraduate students in a tertiary education faculty is established.In order to assist faculty planners in achieving specific goals, a direct control model in fixed time is developed that allows a partial specification of the distribution of students within the system based on the concept of stated ratios. The attainment and maintenance of this objective, together with a given system size for each planning period, is attempted through recruitment control, as this is the most appropriate control mechanism in an educational institution. The unique specification of the distributional objective makes for considerable ease of planning.The development of a useful sensitivity analysis modus operandi, along with a new efficient solution algorithm to the direct control model, further enhances its applicability for faculty planning.