Resources for the Education in Operations Research: Past, Present and Future

In this chapter, we outline the issue of education in the field of Operations Research (OR) and discuss various educational resources that are currently available, with a main focus on the most important international resources, but also with an emphasis on what is currently done in our home country, Portugal. The identification of shortcomings of education in OR and opportunities for its development will follow from the analysis of these resources. By choosing the word “education” over “teaching”, the aim is to stress the fact that (formal) teaching is nothing but one of the multiple aspects of education, whatever the field may be. Finally, we conclude that the dissemination and promotion of the field of OR intimately relates to issues related to education in this field. It is shown that these activities create a direct impact on the ability to attract publics into educational activities in this area, such as students enrolment on courses and programs with a high OR content.