Your Six Hurdles to Academic Auditing, Planning, and Degree Discovery

Students want to complete their education on time, with the credentials they've earned. Agree or disagree?

More than 50% of students don't complete on time.

Students face daily hurdles that impact their academic journeys — from finances to mental well-being and beyond. As leaders in higher education, it's our collective obligation to lower these hurdles so students can experience stress-free academic planning. A smart plan is to anticipate the inevitable changes and still deliver on-time completion for them.

Where can we start? Academic auditing, planning, and degree discovery — a track with six hurdles…some obvious, some not so much. To overcome them, we must first understand them.

That's where we'll begin.

Academic Audits have Cracks in their Foundations

In academia, change is the name of the game. From catalog years and program requirements to class sections and rotations, evolution is the breeding grounds for innovation.

And unfortunately, distress.

Because too often, academic auditing technology cannot keep pace with change — and its intended impact across an organization. Here's what we hear on a consistent basis:

• "It's too difficult to maintain quality audits with spreadsheets and pdfs."
• "Our academic plans pull from outdated, inaccurate audits."
• "We'd need to hire seven more staff to make our current processes work."
• "My students are taking classes that don't count toward their goals."

Does this sound familiar?

Think of an audit as your home's foundation. If cracked, the structural integrity of your home — or in higher education, your academic plans — will be compromised. The consequences are steep: delayed completion, increased cost, and lower student satisfaction.

A successful audit must remain detailed and up to date — not just to pass the home inspection, but to power strong academic plans that lead to student success.

Academic Plans are Rarely Revisited

Picture this scenario. You're an academic advisor meeting your newest freshman student. You have a meaningful conversation about their academic goals, career aspirations, and campus job. You work together to build a comprehensive plan for the next four years.

The following year, you meet again. But this time, everything has changed for the sophomore. He's no longer interested in mathematics but wants to pursue a major in physics — 20% because he's interested in physics and 80% because his girlfriend studies physics. You ask some thought-provoking questions, but he's set on his decision.

You have two choices:

1. You update the academic plan — considering a) his completed courses, grades, placement scores, and b) your schedules, rotations, requisites, restrictions, etc.
2. You do nothing.

Sadly, a large percentage of advisors and students do nothing. And this isn't necessarily by choice. Without next-gen academic planning technology, students and advisors are deemed the de facto planning experts and they're not.

The story probably unfolds like this. That student’s academic plan will likely never be updated. Instead, registration will be treated as the source of truth, leading to more human error that may impact on-time completion and financial obligations.

The elements to any plan — new work hours, dropped classes, declaration changes, etc. — must be considered moving targets, not 'set it and forget it' artifacts. If there's any advice we can offer, it's to revisit and refresh academic plans early and often.

Advisors Lack the Time to Offer Real-Talk Advice

Consider this parallel. It's your quarterly meeting with your financial advisor. You hope to discuss your newest goal — starting a business to generate secondary income for your children's education. You want her advice.

But you don't get any. Because for the next hour, your advisor updates spreadsheet after spreadsheet with your newest investment balances. You wonder, "How come she doesn't already know this info? Can't technology do this in 10 seconds?"

Academic advising is similar. Time is frequently wasted on topics that technology can solve, like:

• Identifying the courses needed to satisfy requirements
• Sequencing courses in the most logical way
• Guessing how changes will affect the time and cost of education

Sadly, authentic discussions — those requiring empathy, expertise, and personal insights — are often neglected. Some examples include:

• Brainstorming ways to improve a student-professor relationship
• Strategizing how to approach upcoming finals and assignments
• Determining housing and meal options for the following year

Just 34% of 2-year students and 25% of 4-year students regard their institution's academic advising support as excellent¹.

The formula to increased excellence is simple. When planners plan — and advisers advise — students get the support and answers they need and covet.

Students Lose too many Credits when Transferring

On average, students lose 43% of their credits during a transfer². And in 2020, 37% of college students transferred³.

For an event so common, how does this happen?

Despite efforts to increase transparency via websites, tooling, and articulation documentation, three obstacles largely remain:

1. Articulation information is difficult for students to access. Even in the most advanced states, students are still required to do manual institution-to-institution, program-to-program, and often course-by-course research.
2. Advisors still review student transcripts and articulate courses from other institutions manually. With no visibility into receiver institutions, transfer advisors struggle under time-intensive, complex workloads.
3. Graduation requirements exist in each institution's degree audit system, but prospective transfer students cannot access the receiver institution's system. It's nearly impossible for them to assess how their courses might articulate and apply before they transfer.

Students must be able to plan around transferring. In turn, they should be able to see how their completed and planned courses align with the degree requirements at a receiving university.

Likewise, institutions need an efficient way to evaluate how each student's completed course work — regardless of the number of schools the student attended — applies to the requirements for degrees and certificates they are accredited to offer.

Students Earn Credentials they are Never Awarded

Sometimes in life, what should be easy is not. Credential discovery fits this bill.

Institutions often struggle to tack student progress across all fields of study. The result? Missed opportunities to identify and award students eligible for degrees and certificates.

Consider this scenario. Michael is a senior chemistry major. In one semester, he'll graduate with honors and pursue a PhD. But over the past three years, Michael has also taken an interest in biology. He has completed seven biology classes, despite no biology declaration. As an advisor…

• Would you know if Michael satisfied the requirements for a biology minor?
• Would you know if Michael were just one class shy of a biology minor?

To ensure each student gets what they've earned, technology must analyze students against the requirements for all degrees and credentials — declared or not.

Only then can advisors take discovery to the next level — identifying degrees and credentials that students are closest to completing, declared or not. Something to consider for re-recruiting stop-outs or pushing near-completers over the finish line…

Planning and Registration are Siloed Activities

Have you ever seen a two-year old carry a glass cup to a nearby table? Some walk so gingerly that you wonder if they'll ever get there. And others run so fast that the cup will never survive. Either way, it's a thing.

Much of the time, registration is also a thing. Because it's treated as a distinct activity from academic planning. When treated as such, we often hear of two adverse outcomes:

• Like the careful two-year old, the student is almost paralyzed by confusion — checking requirements, sections, and schedules repeatedly. This makes registration a stressful event.
• Like the daredevil two-year old, the student sprints to the registration window with few reviews. Whereas the child trips, the student makes a costly, irreversible error.

When treated as joint activities, we experience of a positive outcome — where registration is a natural extension of planning. Where students can add courses, drop courses, and complete registration activities directly from their plans. And where students are proactively warned of potential negative consequences before they commit to a change.

When planning and registration are siloed, we demand too much of students. Stress is endured, and mistakes happen.

When they're integrated, registration is a simple, non-event that instills confidence in their academic journeys.

There are your six hurdles across academic auditing, planning and degree discovery. Did we scare you? That wasn't the intent!

But if you're ready to squash these obstacles forever, we're hosting a weekly demo series showcasing technology unlike anything you've experienced before. Join us!

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