Colleges and Universities regularly follow an incremental pattern for course offerings that accommodates increases in academic program offerings and proliferation of courses. Institutions seldom have the time to review the impact of this approach. For a constant student population, the addition of new courses or programs implies a reduction in the average course enrollment unless existing courses are dropped or offered with less frequency. In reality, courses are not normally dropped from the schedule and thus the efficiency of operations is adversely affected. Institutions rarely analyse the course enrollment data to identify possibilities for greater efficiencies in operation. This is especially important as institutions offer more classes in an online format and thus impacting the traditional face to face classes.
As student numbers grow there is a tendency to add more classes in proportion to the growth. This practice regularly leads to perceptions of need for additional classes and associated increases in instructional staff. An analysis of excess capacity might not support such an assertion. Conversely, declining student populations do not necessarily lead to the appropriate reduction in course offerings.
Furthermore, when such in-house analyses are completed and scheduled for implementation, there is often resistance from faculty and departments who question the impartiality of the study and hint at ulterior motives of the administration. Hence an independent review provides some cover and credibility to resulting actions.
Using proprietary analytical packages, CEO will review historical fall and spring course offerings at an academic institution and couple this analysis with the academic curriculum and enrollment trends. The result of this work is a comprehensive report on the efficiency of course offerings in each of the two semesters.
Actions based on this review would provide the institution with improved scheduling that most likely would lead to significant savings. Because of the modest cost of this study compared with the cost of one class, the institution might expect, through savings, to recover the cost of this study within one semester of implementation. Subsequent semesters and years then yield significant ongoing savings. The impartial and in depth analysis by CEO will prove to be a tremendous investment and deliver substantial savings for any institution.