Sponsored by Stellic
Today’s registrars are crucial for effective academic and enrollment operations – and this often means they’re juggling multiple priorities at once. Amidst their core functions and strategic initiatives, they may be reckoning with questions like: “How can I provide my constituents accurate student records data? How can we enhance user experiences for advisors and students? What will happen when a key staff member of mine retires? Is our current SIS providing the best support – will a new one be better?”
A modern degree audit can answer these questions and enable comprehensive progress toward your various goals and challenges. It can be the most strategic lever that registrars can wield to simultaneously transform access to student records, future-proof staff needs, address SIS longevity, and introduce more efficiency. Here is a look into some of these outcomes and why the investment in a modern solution could offer substantial returns.
Efficiency for the registrar’s office and the institution
No matter an institution's size and complexity, a system that provides accurate and real-time validation of progress toward a degree saves substantial effort for the registrar’s office. It reduces the work and time they put in near commencement to corroborate that students have met their graduation requirements. Ahead of that, it prevents any surprises by allowing students to track their own progress toward completion through an easy-to-interpret progress report.
If and when exceptions are needed, digital workflows within a degree audit allow them to approve petitions or re-route requests to the appropriate channels, eliminating administrative friction and encouraging collaboration with constituents.
Transparent and accessible data
With 88% of registrars believing they should actively engage in SEM efforts at their institution, their role as custodians of the academic record involves removing barriers to the information and data that constituents need for enrollment and student success. A modern degree audit can facilitate what that looks like for various stakeholders.
For students, it gives them the tools and information to manage their degree path and stay on track. For advisors, the system enables them to filter on subsections of students (without needing to learn SQL) so they can identify and remove graduation barriers. Furthermore, a modern audit offers analytics to give different departments key insights, such as which courses to offer according to student requirements.
Supporting staff and staffing needs
A robust degree audit can make life easier for staff and future-proof staffing needs at the same time. First, an intuitive system that allows users to update curriculum and program requirements can make it so that anyone can do this – not only those with coding backgrounds. The ability to make these modifications quickly in a degree audit, along with other efficiencies, allows the registrar’s office team to allocate bandwidth to institutional projects that support enrollment, academic affairs, and degree completion.
Enhancing and future-proofing ERP Systems
A modern degree audit can breathe new life into the existing SIS/ERP, providing a quicker and more resource-effective way to improve user experiences and achieve the outcomes above. For institutions already on the path to a new cloud-based ERP, a robust and trusted degree audit that integrates with the latest ERP eliminates the risk of functionality gaps and often delivers a superior end-user experience for both students and advisors.
Considering a shift
At the end of the day, a degree audit project is no trivial task for your office or your institution. However, it may just be the most impactful investment you can make to enable many of your diverse priorities and needs.
Join our upcoming webinar to hear directly from registrars at Cornell University and Cornell College about how they’re achieving these outcomes and turning their degree audit into the most strategic lever on their campuses on Wednesday, August 7th at 2 pm ET.