An application of a generalised assignment problem: assigning recruiters to geographical locations

In order to increase the number of underrepresented students pursuing college degrees in health sciences fields in the state of West Virginia, the Health Sciences and Technology Academy (HSTA), a pre‐college enrichment programme, was established. Due to a limited budget, a limited number of recruiters are available to recruit as many West Virginia High School students who satisfy the programme's selection criteria. As a result, recruiters are assigned to geographical locations (populations of potential HSTA students) such that the total value of the student populations assigned is maximised with respect to the programme selection criteria. This problem is defined as a generalised assignment problem (GAP), since more than one student population can be assigned to a recruiter such that the capacity of the recruiter is not exceeded. In this paper, a mathematical model, a construction algorithm, and a tabu search heuristic are presented for the proposed GAP.