AACRAO: Use of Degree Audit and Education Planning Solutions

Introduction

The November 2022, 60-Second Survey invited AACRAO members to share how, if at all, their institution uses degree-audit and/or educationplanning technology to support students. There were 653 responses from 11 countries. The majority of responses were from the United States (n = 621) and Canada (n = 23). Sixty-three percent of respondents serve both undergraduate and graduate and/or professional students, 29% serve undergraduate students only and 8% serve graduate and/or professional students only.

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Working Definitions

Degree-audit solution - system that examines all of the graduation requirements for a given educational credential and compares those requirements to elements of a student's official college record.

Education-planning solution - system that enables a student to indicate in real-time to the institution which courses they intend to enroll in and in what sequence. The institution can use this data to project class demand, support academic advising, assist with institutional resource allocations, assess program viability, etc.

Although degree-audit technology is generally mature, about half of the institutions who use this technology are not able to take full advantage of the level of automation and accuracy afforded by these technologies. In this sample, 46% of the undergraduate student degree-audit assessments are "fully trusted" and 50% of the graduate and/or professional student degree-audit assessments are equally trusted. This level of confidence in the degree-audit assessment enables these institutions to automate a number of previously manually intensive processes including awarding degrees and academic advising. An inability to program fully the degree completion requirements, the number and frequency of course substitutions and other exceptions to degree plans are reasons why the degree-audit assessments are not fully trusted by stakeholders in the other half of this sample.

Student use of degree-audit solutions is considerably higher than their use of the education-planning solution. This could be due to the comparatively new availability of education-planning solutions.

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Key Data

UNDERGRADUATE-SERVING INSTITUTIONS

• 92% use a degree-audit solution
• 43% use an education-planning solution
• 7% use neither
• 46% fully trust the accuracy of the degree-audit assessment and use the assessment to award degrees and advise students with few, if any, manual corrections
• 15% enable prospect-not-yet-applicant use of the degree audit to help map a transfer pathway; 85% do not enable prospect-not-yet-applicant use of the degree audit
• 39% describe their use of data from the degree-audit and/or education planning solution as "some localized, reactive analytics and reporting efforts"
• 36% describe their use of data from the degree-audit and/or education planning solution as, "none, or very little"

GRADUATE AND/OR PROFESSIONAL-SERVING INSTITUTIONS

• 80% use a degree-audit solution
• 30% use an education-planning solution
• 18% use neither
• 2% use only an education-planning solution
• 50% fully trust the accuracy of the degree-audit assessment and use the assessment to award degrees and advise students with few, if any, manual corrections
• 43% describe their use of data from the degree-audit and/or education planning solution as "some localized, reactive analytics and reporting efforts"
• 48% describe their use of data from the degree-audit and/or education planning solution as, "none, or very little"

Data are displayed in the aggregate in the figures on the following pages. If you have any questions or would like to see the data disaggregated by institutional characteristics, please contac tWendy Kilgore, AACRAO Senior Director of Research, at wendyk@aacrao.org.

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Use Of Degree-audit And/or Education-planning Solutions

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Estimated Percentage of Students Who Use the Degree-Audi Solution

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Level of Stakeholder Trust in the Accuracy of the Degree Audit Assessment

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Reasons for Modest Trust or No Trust in the Degree Audit Solution

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Extent of Data Use from the Degree-Audit Solution

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Other Reasons the Degree-Audit Solution is Not Fully Trusted

Widespread departure from the prescribed curriculum (substitutions and waivers) requires manual intervention.

Past scribing issues are creating problems with buy-in that the audits are accurate. Institutional requirements and corresponding courses are not currently accurate.

Programs use their own curriculum guides/checklist.

Faculty does not want to learn the system.

Unit degree auditors/recorders tend to trust the tool more than advisors or students. Historically widespread inaccuracy and lack of maintenance have led to an entrenched sense of mistrust in the too land a reluctance to bother requesting updated requirements.(we're trending upward over the past five years, though!!!)

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Estimated Percentage of Students That Use the Education Planning Solution

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Extent of Data Use From the Education-planning Solution