Developing Optimal Student Plans of Study

Advisors in a small graduate program needed to be able to help students with a wide variety of needs and preferences in terms of starting term, pace of study, program of study, and mode of course delivery to identify plans of study in a dynamic fashion and enable them to follow those plans. Course sections were limited and needed to serve multiple programs and all types of students in those programs. Last-second schedule changes due to overly large or small registration numbers were problematic. Special arrangements to allow students to graduate on time were frequent and costly and lowered academic quality. Analytical tools were developed to help with the planning and alleviate these issues. The tools and the overall approach should be of interest to educational institutions and programs that need to offer a wide variety of students extensive flexibility and choices within a highly constrained scheduling environment.