In recent years, with the expansion of existing institutions as well as the establishment of new ones, higher
education institutions have suffered the problem of declining available resources. Each university must assess the
performance of its critical business units to measure effectiveness and efficiency. The purpose of this paper is to
assess university performance. In the paper, we apply the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (Fuzzy AHP) and the
Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model with an assurance region (AR) for measuring the efficiency scores of
universities. In the first phase, the fuzzy AHP is employed to get the weights of output indicators. The derived
weight ranges are then used for the AR to allow weights varying within a region determined by lower bounds and
upper bounds. In the second phase, the DEA with AR approach measures the performance of Vietnamese
universities to illustrate the approach. The framework may be a useful tool by which institution managers may
improve their performance levels and effectively allocate resources.