Course Planning in Educational Programs: A Project Management Approach

Universities today face heightened competition, tight budgets, and stringent accreditation requirements. Students, on the other hand, have expectations in terms of time-to-degree, cost of attendance, program quality, curricular flexibility, and schedule convenience. Researchers have used various approaches to address educational program planning: mathematical programming, simulation, Markov analysis, material requirements planning, and flow analysis. Here, we propose a data-driven approach that uses enrollment data along with project management methodology. The degree program is viewed as a “project” with multiple, related tasks (courses). We define appropriate performance measures and develop decision rules to determine the schedule for future course offerings.