This paper proposes a model for dealing with the long term staff composition planning in public universities. University academic staff is organized in units (or departments) according to their field of expertise. The staff for each unit is distrib uted in a set of categories, each one characterized by their teaching hours, cost and other specificities. Besides the use for planning (and upd ating a plan), the model can be used to assess the impact that different stra tegies may have on the personnel costs and the structure of a uni versity. The proposed model is formulated generally, so it can be applied to different types of un iversities attending to their characterist ics. The model is applied to a real case and validated by means of a computational experiment considering several scenarios. The analysis is focu sed on achieving a preferable academic staff com position under service level constraints whil e also minimizing the associated economic expenditures considering a long term horiz on. The results show that the model successes in approaching the staff composition to a previously defined pattern preferable one

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