Elective course assignment problem: a revenue management based approach

Abstract The current paper aims to provide a novel approach for the assignment of students to elective courses using historical records of course capacities and student demand. With this aim, we establish a link between the course assignment problem and the airline seat allocation modeling of Revenue Management. An analogy is set up relying on the assumption that the students form distinct groups and intend to enroll in the elective courses with limited capacities, which is similar to different classes of customers to purchase tickets for the flights with limited capacities. We illustrate the proposed idea in a real-world case utilizing the historical demand and capacity data of a public university in which the senior students have priority in enrolling. The results of the proposed modeling can serve not only for capacity allocations to the courses but also offers suggestions to evaluate the potential capacity augmentation or reduction decisions.