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Methodology:

We adapted a market axis with the 10 criteria survey questions that was administered by Task
Force and the Provost. The amendments are as follows: a) Instead of Criterion 2, we calculate
a composite marketing evaluation, where the responses of Louisiana Star, Gallup and US
Outlook are weighted by 50%, 25% and 25% respectively and normalized the data so that the
min and max values are 0 and 1. We added the discretized average number of graduates
2012/13-2016/17 to Criterion 5. The discretization was made such that the number of
graduates is placed into 5 bins that equally split the range between min and max average
number of graduates. For all criteria (except criterion 2), we normalized the total sum of
responses with the maximal number of responses. Then, we multiplied such normalized
responses with weights chosen in order to obtain normalized weighted scores. We utilized
criteria 2,9, 10 to generate Market axis, and criteria 1,3-8 to generate Quality axis. For each
axis, and each program, the total sum of normalized weighted responses is divided by the
sum of corresponding weights, thus standardizing each axis between -1 and 1. Finally, in
each direction, we determined the average value, and thus generated 4 quadrants
corresponding to the recommendations.

Final 1: Quadrant Placement

34 | P a ge S O U T H E R N U N IVE R S IT Y