An academic department of a college or university typically constructs its yearly schedule of classes in two stages. First, each faculty member is assigned a set of classes or course sections to teach during the year. Following that days, times, and room numbers are assigned to each course section. These two procedures are almost universally performed manually, demanding various degrees of combinatorial skill and political astuteness on the part of the course scheduler. Depending on the size of the department and the diversity of course offerings, the time required to construct such a schedule of classes can range from a perfunctory afternoon's work to an intensive month-long ordeal. Recent work by Dyer and Mulvey [Dyer, James, John Mulvey. 1976. An integrated optimization/information systems for academic departmental planning. Management Science 22 (12, August) 1332–1341; Dyer, James, John Mulvey. 1977. Computerized scheduling and planning. New Directions for Institutional Research 13 (Spring) 67–86.] has addressed the problem of assigning faculty members to specific classes or course sections. They developed a network flow model that was successfully used to assign faculty members to course sections at the Graduate School of Management at UCLA.

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Recent experience in higher education indicates that modeling can be used effectively without compromising academic values. In fact, college and university administrators are finding that models can be learning devices as well as decision‐making aids.

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Quality management is a broad subject whose principles and practices are best understood when studied in the context of real-life organizations. This article describes a major quality assessment field project that serves as the integrative vehicle for an MBA curriculum. Each year the entire entering MBA class devotes a portion of 8 months to performing comprehensive quality audits of external organizations. Whereas they reinforce the principles of quality management, the field projects also require students to integrate the knowledge gained from each of their MBA courses in critically examining all operational areas of their host organizations.