THE UNIVERSITY TIMETABLING PROBLEM IN UZBEKISTAN'S HIGHER EDUCATION SYSTEM: SCALE, COMPLEXITY, AND THE CASE FOR AUTOMATION
Keywords:
University timetabling assigns courses, instructors, groups and rooms to time slots so that hard constraints (no double-booking; room capacity/type match) hold and soft constraints (compactness, balanced load) are optimized as far as possible.Abstract
Uzbekistan's higher education sector has grown rapidly: the number of institutions rose from 69 (2015/2016) to 222 (2024/2025), enrolment grew more than fivefold to about 1,432,800 students, and coverage of the 18–23 age cohort rose from 6.8% to 47.7% [Davlat statistika qo‘mitasi 2025]. Education is named a priority sector for digitalization under the “Digital Uzbekiston – 2030” strategy [PF-6079, 2020]. Yet most institutions still build timetables manually, department by department, in spreadsheets — a process whose administrative burden grows combinatorially, not linearly, with each additional course, room and instructor.
References
1.Schaerf, A. A survey of automated timetabling // Artificial Intelligence Review. — 1999. — Vol. 13, No. 2. — P. 87–127.
2.Even, S., Itai, A., Shamir, A. On the complexity of timetable and multicommodity flow problems // SIAM Journal on Computing. — 1976. — Vol. 5, No. 4. — P. 691–703.
3.Ceschia, S., Di Gaspero, L., Schaerf, A. Educational timetabling: problems, benchmarks, and state-of-the-art results // European Journal of Operational Research. — 2023. — Vol. 308, No. 1. — P. 1–18.
4.Xue, G., Offodile, O. F., Razavi, R., Kwak, D.-H., Benitez, J. Addressing staffing challenges through improved planning // Decision Support Systems. — 2024. — Vol. 187.
5.To‘xtasinov, M. T., Sadritdinov, N. X. Oliy ta’lim tizimida dars jadvalini avtomatik tuzishni modellashtirish // Xalqaro ilmiy-texnik konferensiya materiallari to‘plami, 1-qism. — Namangan: NamDTU, 2025. — B. 40–44.
6.O‘zbekiston Respublikasi Davlat statistika qo‘mitasi. Oliy ta’lim muassasalari soni 3,2 barobar oshib, 222 taga yetdi [Press release] // UzDaily.uz, 29.05.2025.
