On the Evolution of Academic Staff Structure in a University Setting

This paper models the academic staff structure in a university as a system of stocks and flows in a three-dimensional space, ℝ³. The stocks are the number of academic staff in a particular state at a given time and the flows are the staff moving between any two states over an interval of time. The paper places emphasis on the grade-specific completion rates of Graduate Assistants, who choose to study in the university in which they are employed for higher degrees. The study describes the evolution of structures in the university as a linear recurrence system. Some aspects of linear algebra are employed as a theoretical underpinning to gain insights into the transformation matrix of the recurrence system. A number of resulting propositions are presented along with their proofs. We provide two theorems to serve as a means of predicting a university manpower structure. Following that a numerical illustration of the theorems and propositions is provided with data which are representative of the kind of data in a Nigerian university system.

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