Improved graduate audits speeds clearance

The perennial problem of the degree audit process - otherwise known as graduation check - is about to become a problem of the past at Cal State Long Beach, said two officers of enrollment services.

Not that they are going away, but the encoding of an on-line degree requirements has decreased the 20 minutes to 1 hour it took to start average one down to 30 seconds.

So much progress has been made in the process, says evaluation officer Susan Alvarez, that all of the approximately 2,800 requests that were filed on time for May graduation are finished. The 200-plus late filers are close to being finished, she said.

"We have put into the system all the major department (degree programs) that are pretty much straight forward," Alvarez said. "There are less than a dozen at this point that we have not been able to program."

"We have four evaluators that are responsible by alphabet and student population for processing the degree audits," Alvarez said.

The evaluators have to manually adjust the audit for substitutions, department waivers and double-check the placement of things like interdisciplinary courses that may satisfy two requirements, she said.

"We find that 80 to 90 percent of the students make some kind of change to their degree program," Alvarez said. "It's that kind of manipulation that takes the most time."

The automation of most of the calculations for degree requirements is allowing the evaluation to reach students sooner, giving them a chance to clear their records before being denied clearance to graduate.

The clearance cut-off for this semester is May 31, said Jeanette Norton the director of enrollment services.

Trouble surfaces for students when they don't bother to read the evaluation or follow up on their remaining requirements, Alvarez said.

Students have returned years after leaving Cal State Long Beach and question why their degrees have never been posted, only to discover that they are missing pieces of their academic record.

Often, links to courses taken at other colleges to meet requirements after enrolling at CSULB are courses students fail to notify the evaluation office about, Norton said.

"If a student has broken continuous enrollment, they can be held to new degree requirements," Alvarez said.

Students only hurt themselves by not coming to enrollment services and checking their status, she said.

Eventually, the goal of enrollment services is to send students an updated degree audit with each semester's grade so they will have a current record, Norton said.

We haven't set a time on that yet," she said. "Fall 1995 semester was the first time students were notified within their term of graduation."