As we discussed in previous entries, academic program capacity management relies on a thorough understanding of the course needs of your students. The following institutions have begun to make progress with this new, but highly promising approach:

Eastern Connecticut State University: Eastern has appropriately branded itself as Connecticut’s liberal arts university. This brand relies on relatively small classes and considerable course variety for its students. Obviously, these attributes make it especially challenging to efficiently and effectively manage course offerings and program capacity. For this reason, Dr. David Carter (then Eastern’s President, now the Connecticut State University System’s Chancellor) began exploring ways to make more informed decisions when building their schedules. His team (consisting of degree audit and student information system experts) has played a huge role in the evolution of our Platinum Analytics Suite. Eastern is currently leveraging newly available analytics information to identify course bottlenecks (hard-to-get courses) in their various academic programs. They plan to roll out the academic planner to solicit direct student feedback on course needs this spring.

Kwantlen University College: Kwantlen is a large and growing two-year/four-year institution in suburban Vancouver, BC. Kwantlen has struggled to deliver courses efficiently to its commuter students who frequently attend classes on more than one of their four primary campuses. Additionally, Kwantlen’s provincial funding is tied to enrollment levels and student success outcomes. For these reasons, Kwantlen joined six other institutions on our innovators group (advisors and early adopters for our Platinum Analytics Suite). Kwantlen is beginning to utilize analytics data to improve the efficiency of their course offerings and faculty assignments. Furthermore, they are studying how student-specific information can be used to increase the average course load of its students and thereby increase their FTE enrollment levels tied to funding.

Other institutions, some of which are on our innovators group with Eastern and Kwantlen, have embarked on similar exercises in additional related areas. Plans have been made to support the modeling of faculty allocation and faculty hiring to support course offerings.

This concludes our series on academic program capacity management. We would love the opportunity to discuss these concepts and how they may apply to the strategic mission and business challenges of your institution.