The selection of financial support among students using Analytic Hierarchy Process / Nur Azra Syamimi Jamaludin, Noorrul A'inaa Anuar and Faezah Mohd Puad

This research focuses on the application of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was introduced by Saaty 1970s. I\Iost of the students in Malaysia have been using financial support to reduce the burden of their studies. Analytic Hierarchy Process· is one of the multi-criteria decision making (:t\ICDJ\1) methods that commonly uses nowadays. The problem state¬ ment in this study is the preference of students and by using pairwise matrix comparison in choosing criteria and alternatives that best suited as their financial support. The objectives of this research are to deter¬ mine the main criteria of the financial support and to look the preferable financial support among students by using the Analytic Hierarchy Pro¬ cess method. Criteria that been chosen in this research are the total cost, interest rate, requirement, monthly payment, and other expenses whereas for the alternatives are PTPTN, MARA, JPA, State Government Loan, and Maybank Loan. The method of Analytic Hierarchy Process is to solve the complex decision making and unstructured problem into a hi¬ erarchical structure. Pairwise comparison is the most important steps to be used in AHP methods. This step is to calculate the weight for each criterion. Next, the matrix has been calculated to verify the consistency, If the consistency is less than O .1, then the pairwise comparison is consis¬ tent. This observation may support the hypothesis that the best financial support will be recognized between the all criteria and alternative of these research. From this study, the result shows that the most important cri¬ teria that considered by the student are other expenses ( C5) and the most preferable alternative is PTPTN (A i) for financial support selection.