In this series, we’ll discuss a capacity issue that is related to but even more important than facilities capacity management – academic program capacity management. The phrase “academic program capacity management” or even the general concept may be unfamiliar to you. But, even if you have not spent much time considering the “capacity” of your academic programs, it is important to recognize that effective academic program capacity management allows institutions to deliver on its promises made during the admissions process.

 

Most institutions approach admissions in a way that targets an overall number of new students entering during an academic term. Academic program capacity management, however, considers the projected academic career path of each student and the institution’s ability to make available the courses and teaching resources that they need. It’s a way to model each student’s proposed route to completion or graduation and the academic road blocks that he or she may face.

 

Essentially, those roadblocks – lack of available seats in required courses (typically caused by lack of available teaching resources) – are to the course offering management process what space bottlenecks are to the space management process. Note: Please refer to my previous series of blog entries for more information on space management.

 

Next week, we’ll dive into why the effective management of academic program capacity management is a vitally important issue for higher education.

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