Evaluation of the companies for applied education under fuzzy environment: a case in an industrial university

Nowadays, the problem of university graduates being unemployed is gradually increasing. To keep down unemployment, universities are integrating the concept of "applied education" into their educational curricula. The concept of applied education brings with it the problem of the correct student-company matching. In this study, the company selection criteria were focused on to determine the companies that university students will be sent to within the scope of applied education. Company selection criteria are determined by experts in the field. However, the evaluation of experts with precise criteria values can be very challenging in the decision-making process. For this purpose, the criteria weights were calculated using the Pythagorean Fuzzy AHP method in this study. Evaluation of companies to which students will be matched for applied/workplace education is ranked with these fuzzy weights by using TOPSIS and PROMETHEE II methods. To evaluation the proposed decision process, a real case study is carried out in an industrial private university in Turkey. The case study results show that the proposed method can provide effective and consistent results in the evaluation of companies under fuzzy environment.