SIMULATION OF EDUCATIONAL PROCESS MANAGEMENT TO SUPPORT SUSTAINABILITY OF AN INNOVATIVE HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTION

摘要

We consider sustainable development as a process to reach balanced solutions for higher education institutions, the society, and the natural environment. To illustrate our approach and validate a possibility of its practical use, we describe a simulation model. This particular model has been developed by us as a portion of our project to analyze the dynamics and support the student enrolment process at a new innovative college. We are viewing enrollment dynamics as a queuing system that can be described with discrete simulation network terminology. We used professional simulation software for implementation of our model with a network graphical schema that was translated into appropriate simulation model code. We organized a set of numerical computer experiments with the simulation model to validate the possibility of using it to analyze the enrolment dynamics in the college. Generated numerical results and their validation indicate that our approach to analyze sustainability of a higher education institution by using simulation technology is correct and can be applied for practical purposes. Our investigation of existing publications and Internet resources indicates that our approach to analyze and support sustainability of a higher education institution may be considered as a pioneer.