Sponsored by Stellic.
The typical degree conferral process developed when campuses lacked the tracking capabilities that today’s technology can provide. For many institutions, administrative processes for confirming graduation requirements have not leveraged the real-time insights of modern degree tracking and planning tools.
How do we begin to overcome the historical barriers to modernizing the degree clearance process in today's academic environment? To provide a more seamless process for students and staff, institutions must transform three critical areas around degree clearance.
Promote transparency and empower student agency
Although most incoming college students are confident that they’ll graduate on time, just 41% of students manage to do so in four years. Despite the best efforts to provide student support resources, navigating the higher ed experience can still be daunting for many. Equipping students with a centralized planning system with a trusted degree audit at its core allows them to visualize each component of their pathway at any given time and instill confidence in the progress they are making. This way, students can better understand the impacts of their choices on time to completion and alleviate any confusion or worry before it’s too late.
Automate common workflows
The registrar's office may work through thousands of requests every term, including exceptions, waivers, major/minor changes, and graduation applications. Many of these processes require multiple steps, forms, and people power to be cleared for approval. As a result, significant time is often spent on manual efforts, and students can feel left in the dark on their progress or degree clearance status as they await answers to their requests.
Shifting to real-time degree tracking and customizable workflows can digitize these requests to automatically inform administrators when a student has completed the necessary requirements to graduate and when a student’s progress is misaligned with their expected graduation date.
This shift can ultimately speed up the degree clearance process, improve communication between departments, and eliminate back-and-forth emails and forms. Furthermore, with modern technology available to enable this transition today, we can imagine a world where students would not need to “apply” for graduation as an extra, and often forgotten, step – the support systems in place can automatically identify students that are set to graduate and notify both students and staff accordingly, ensuring all relevant parties are informed every step of the way towards completion.
Championing the Shift
Equally important is the confidence of academic units across campus who now champion the movement toward modern practices. Open lines of communication, relationship building, and check-ins are critical to streamlining coordination.
Join our upcoming webinar to learn how George Mason University is exploring new ways to modernize the degree clearance process, enhance their degree audit, and bring the right stakeholders together on Wednesday, April 27th at 2 pm ET.