While attempts to address academic program capacity issues are almost always worthwhile, the best practices adopted by our industry over the past few years have significant drawbacks. Last week, I discussed the most popular of those practices—historical course demand analysis and templated scheduling. This week, I’ll discuss their limitations.

The analysis of course demand in historical schedules is a powerful tool, one that we use in our Platinum Analytics Suite. Relying completely on this form of analysis, however, is problematic. The most significant issue is that historical scheduling practices can dramatically skew the results. For example, offering a limited number of seats or scheduling during unpopular times can curtail course demand, while opposite practices can increase demand. Additionally, historical analysis does not account for the recent changes in the curriculum or student demographics.

Templated and/or block scheduling is viewed by many as overly restrictive. Plus, even when pure block scheduling is deemed acceptable, it only works for the minority of students that manage to stay perfectly on the cohort (no transfers, withdrawals, failures, part-time load during any term, etc.) actually benefit from the course access that this approach is designed to promote. Regarding template schedules, we like the idea of offering a variety of templates reflecting student need and interest. This approach is a compelling alternative to block scheduling, but its deployment is dependent upon a thorough understanding of that need and interest. Since templated scheduling is typically a response to a lack of such understanding, a chicken and egg dilemma emerges.

Check in again next week to learn about new approaches that overcome these limitations allow institutions to take control of their academic program capacity.