Fuzzy cluster analysis on Spanish public universities

Abstract

The present study tries to provide an alternative approach, by grouping Spanish public universities for the academic year 2006, into clusters that are statistically similar acrossall criteria, without making any assumptions about the relative importance of each criterion. When using (non fuzzy) clustering techniques, universities can only belong to a group, having a particular performance. But, actually, the same university could be important from different perspectives at the same time, to a different degree. In this sense, a fuzzy clustering approach is applied. With the results, it is possible to know the situation of each Spanish public university at the national context.