I used to run a team that handled student registrations and course demand. At our best, three people supported about 1,600 students — and they did it with ease. The reason was simple: our program planning was so good, and our retention was so strong, that forecasting demand became easy.
It didn’t start that way, though.
The mad dash before every term
Before we reached that level of scale and precision, our forecasts got us maybe 80% of the way there. That sounds pretty good until you see what the other 20% does to the weeks before a term starts.
- Too many students for one section, too few for two. We’d wait to see how registration went leading up to the start. If the numbers came in, the second section got the green light. If they didn’t, we canceled it and had to find room for everyone who didn’t make it in. That’s where the waitlists came from.
- Too few students for a course to run. Sometimes we’d keep the course open to see if registrations came in. If they didn’t, we canceled it, then re-planned every affected student and got approvals where needed.
Either way, it was a mad dash leading up to the start. And that was with a solid system that got us to 80%.
When students don’t have course plans at all, it’s open season on sections. That’s when you see cancellations pile up, room bookings get complicated, and every term gets harder to manage.
The fix: a course plan for every student, from day one
Here’s the process that made our demand predictable:
- A student starts and gets an ideal course plan.
- Course plans feed your course planning sessions. Your forecast adds up the real next steps of real students.
- Completed courses update the plan. As students finish courses, it’s much easier to place them into the right courses and sections, and the forecast updates with them.
- A break triggers a re-plan right away. If a student steps out, re-plan them immediately and feed the new plan into the forecast.
- At-risk courses get flagged 2 to 4 weeks out. Ideally, a system tracks all of this so you know ahead of time when a course is likely to be canceled. Then you can reach students early: “This course may not run. Would you like to switch to a different course that still meets your requirements?” This works especially well for electives, in undergrad or in grad programs with elective options.
Where AI fits
Once those inputs are in place, AI can take on much of the repetitive work in this cycle:
- Building program plans. AI can draft each student’s plan from your course rotation, program requirements and prerequisites.
- Spotting who needs a re-plan. Automated checks can flag students who need to be re-planned, like someone who takes a break.
- Following up and updating. AI can handle the outreach to those students, then update the program plan once a change is confirmed.
Put together, you can optimize the full program planning cycle, including outgoing communications and student support, which leaves your team more time for the meaningful work that requires your team’s expertise — supporting and coaching students through their degree.
Retention makes the forecast firmer
Forecasting and retention go hand in hand. The better you keep students on track, the firmer your forecast gets, and the easier next term is to predict. The good news is in my experience — having program plans per student, shared with students at the time that they start, with their graduation date, actually leads to stronger term to term retention. Why? Students like knowing when the finish line is; it crystallizes the vision for them, and it motivates them to stay on track.
Once we have this infrastructure in place, we can continue to build additional AI-first optimizations, geared towards empowering your team to scale the busy work and focus on where they can have the most impact: student support.
One thing to try in the next 30 days
Pick one program and ask: what would it look like to have an ideal program plan here? Even for an undergrad program, it’s entirely possible. You already have the inputs: your course rotation, your program requirements and the prerequisites in your course catalog.
Once that plan is stable, test the process with the Course Planner, a free tool I built. It forecasts next term’s demand from your course plans, return rates and pass rates. It also builds a room-and-time schedule, and during registration it tracks pace against your forecast and flags courses that may need another section or are at risk of cancellation. It works with group counts only, so no student records are needed.
If you’d like help building that first program plan, I’d love to work through it with you. Book a free 30-minute call.
Try it: Course Planner
