A Model for Evaluating the Financial Performance of Islamic Azad Universities using the Combination of ANFIS and PSO

The previous studies in the field of performance evaluation of academic centers and educational institutions are more concentrated on educational and research indicators, and the rankings made for universities are based on these indicators; whereas, today, the lack of financial resources of universities and especially the Islamic Azad University (IAU), is one of the issues that should be given special attention. Accordingly, the purpose of this research is to evaluate the financial performance of universities by using the combination of ANFIS and PSO meta-heuristic algorithms. This research has been applied in terms of the purpose, applied-developmental research and descriptive research in terms of method. The statistical population of this research has been all units of  IAU across the country. The statistical sample size was selected based on Morganchr(chr(chr('39')39chr('39'))39chr(chr('39')39chr('39')))s table of 214 units of the IAU. The sampling method was also purposeful and in order to obtain the required data for input and output variables. To collect data from the questionnaire, the Delphi method and the existing university documents were used. In order to analyze the research data, Delphi methods and comparative neural-fuzzy system combined with a particle congestion optimization algorithm have been used. The research results show that the designed system with the least error is able to evaluate and predict the financial performance of the university.