Abstract
This paper proposes a nonlinear Goal Programming Model (GPM) for solving the problem of admission capacity planning in academic universities. Many factors of university admission capacity planning have been taken into consideration among which are number of admitted students in the past years, total population in the country, number of graduates from secondary schools, desired ratios of specific specialties, faculty-to-students ratio, and the past number of graduates. The proposed model is general and has been tested at King Abdulaziz University (KAU) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where the work aims to achieve the key objectives of a five-year development plan in addition to a 25-year future plan (AAFAQ) for universities education in the Kingdom. Based on the results of this test, the proposed GPM with a modified differential evolution algorithm has approved an ability to solve general admission capacity planning problem in terms of high quality, rapid convergence speed, efficiency, and robustness.