Structured Decision-Making for Specialization Track Selection: Applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process

Students need to think carefully about what they want to study in college because it will affect their future endeavors. In considering specialization, there are many factors to check, such as school performance, different courses, and goals. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a structured tool for helping people make decisions. It does this by breaking the process into a hierarchy of factors and choices. This gives a clear and consistent framework that makes it easier to make choices. With the help of AHP and a group of 31 classes, this study was able to generate recommendations on which specialization track a student may take, given their grades. The results show that AHP is a good tool for making choices in education. Additionally, the Consistency Ratios for both alternatives are lower than 0.1, which is consistent. However, the involvement of a person could lead to subjective judgments and possible inconsistencies. With this, the study recommended that machine learning (ML) algorithms be added to the AHP framework to get around these issues. The use of machine learning can make plans more accurate and less subjective by automating the process of weighing and drawing conclusions from data.