Abstract

This paper presents a multi-criteria approach regarding the significance of human values in higher education. Nowadays, there is concern and expectation if the inclusion of a value structure would help the institution management. Although the effect is hard to measure and even though there have been some studies, this issue cause reasons for discussion and still there are questions to answer. It involves a formal and active commitment for the participants, as managers, administrative staff, academics and student families related to each institution. Everyone has diverse responsibilities within the organization and these should be in concordance with the institution values. This constitutes a major challenge for educational establishment since it is difficult and complex to ensure that the individual positions will come into close association. It has been explored a case study in the Chilean higher education, as a first approximation at public and private university faculties. The purpose of the research is to investigate human value priority that higher education institution should include in the institutional declaration aimed to the achievement of an integrated education. It is configured a multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) model applying the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to recognize human values, based on stakeholders’ statement and Schwartz´s value structure. Empirical data is collected from different participants. The process results highlighted the important function of academics and managers. Based on expert judgments we could verify the relative importance of educators in transmitting the agreed values by the higher education institution and the collaboration of stakeholders, demonstrating the need for the creation of a Value Community to carry out this initiative.