uAchieve Degree Audit Reporting System

About the Project (Historical Information)

A vision for the next generation of UC San Diego’s Degree Audit Reporting System (DARS) was created in 2014 to meet evolving needs of degree audit functionality and address campus strategies for time-to-degree improvement.

This project was identified as an education initiative to provide coordinated and seamless access to comprehensive academic, professional and career advising across all colleges, departments and units.

uAchieve was selected as the new solution with a suite of tools that will:

• Contribute to the reduction of time-to-degree for students.
• Improve the overall student experience.
• Demonstrate that we are a student-centric institution.

Value to Campus

uAchieve is a coordinated campus infrastructure that serves approximately 280 academic undergraduate and graduate advising units and more than 36,000 students.

Students

The old system only allowed students to view pre-run audits.

Undergraduate and graduate students will now be able to track their degree progress and see in real time how changes to their classes impact completion of their requirements. Undergraduates can also: 

• Plan multiple paths to achieve their objective of four-year graduation.
• Generate degree audits on demand.
• Conduct individualized “what-if” audits to explore four-year plan options.

Advisors

Approximately 280 college and department advisors will benefit from the improved student preparation and an understanding of the affects specific decisions, like a change in major, can have on their time to graduation. Students can work independently or in collaboration with an advisor to build a personalized academic plan that is validated against the degree audit data.

Departments will gain valuable insight for future course demand analysis and classroom scheduling based on the aggregate data that can be accessed through student term-by-term plans.

Departments will also benefit from improved reporting. Through the planned batch process, departments will have improved visibility into how students use courses, like AP courses, to meet degree requirements. Department also have visibility into major GPA data, which is not currently available.

Risk Mitigation

The current servers and database are products provided by CollegeSource with front end user access made up of home-built web applications.

Over the years, the UC San Diego programmers have heavily customized the front end, which does not allow use of key functionality provided by CollegeSource. This is also difficult to update, costly to maintain and will be retired by the vendor in the near future.

Synergies

Return on Investment

We expect increased retention and graduation rates by directly engaging students in their academic planning. The uAchieve planner increases student investment in their own future helping them make educated decisions in course selection, keeping on track in completing degree requirements, and ultimately preparing them to graduate on time.

Built-in warnings and notifications ensure students stay on track and meet plan goals, and students will be able to map out a four-year graduation path utilizing interactive planning and advisor-prepared roadmaps.

Replacing a heavily customized solution with a standardized one will reduce the complexity of maintenance and support. Upgrades and maintenance will be performed by the vendor. Access will be provided to the entire uAchieve support system, including learning and innovation from other campuses where it’s in use.

The new system also provides a foundation for monitoring NCAA Division 1 requirements.

Finally, the new system provides a foundation Enrollment Management the ability to leverage prospective transfer student recruitment efforts by publishing student articulation information within a network of institutions, leveraging a nationwide presence.

Meet the uAchieve Team

Meet the uAchieve project team for key contacts.