General Education and Pre-General Education Holds

General Education and Pre-General Education Holds

Concerns fromMOCC

January 27, 2006

Updated March 31, 2006

Registrars have discussed the timeline for running central reports for students needing holds placed on registration according to BOR Policy 2:7.

Pre-General Education Requirements – Transfer students

The current pre-general education requirements do not adequately address the requirements for part-time transfer students who may only take one or two courses per semester or allow an adequate timeframe for full-time transfer students to meet the requirements. We propose the following changes to the policy.

(If the LART 041 Reading course is implemented for Fall 06, we may want to allow transfers more time to enroll in the pre-general education courses since students would have a potential of 9 0-level credits (LART 041, Math 021 and English 033).

Students transferring from non Regental institutions must enroll in pre-general education courses during the first 24 attemptedRegental credit hours semester of attendance. These students may enroll in other courses concurrently with the pre-general education courses.

If the student does not complete the pre-general education courses during the first 30regental credit hours attempted a registration hold (CPG1) will be placed on their records.semester of attendance,

Is there a reason that the number of credit hours in the two paragraphs is NOT the same? If they are not the same, then we will need an additional restriction for the 24 credit hour requirement. If the number of credit hours in the two paragraphs were the same, we could use the two existing restrictions.

If students do not successfully complete the pre-general education courses within 42 attemptedregental credit hours a hold (CPG2) will be placed on their records and the only course(s) in which a student may enroll is the pre-general education course(s); and the student’s status is changed from degree seeking to non degree seeking.

ASCC agrees with the change to use Regental credit hours instead of semesters in the three paragraphs above.

The Vice President for Academic Affairs may grant an exception.

If this proposed change is approved, we would need to address the following issues:

Identification of transfer and part-time students

Campuses need to identify transfer students as they are accepted and prior to registration for classes. Currently, campuses manually identify and code these students, which is very time consuming and might allow for students to not be advised correctly prior to taking classes in their first semester in the Regental system. New codes identifying these students and their start term are being discussed by the technical groups.

Timeline

The current timeline for running reports as listed in the System Processing Calendar adequately addresses continuing and currently enrolled students, but does not address campus needs for transfer students.

1. We suggest reports for new transfer students and part-time students be separated from the continuing students and run at different times of the semester. The current RIS Processing Schedule shows the lists to add CPG1 and CPG2 holds only being run the first weeks of March and October.

2. We would also like these reports run after final grades have been posted each semester. This will allow us to help students register for the appropriate pre-general education coursework for the next semester.

3. The reports to add the holds would need to be run more frequently during the summer so that we could contact transfer students as they are accepted and transfer work is loaded prior to initial registration.

ASCC aggress that the paragraph for transfer students should be run more frequently all year (not just during the summer). We would need to rely on the Application Admit Status of ‘T’ to identify the students, because enroll status is not always accurate for transfer students because it is only updated when the Update program is run after the term starts. The transfer students would need to be identified before that occurs.

Additional Pre-General Education Requirements

Additional pre-general education requirementsare being discussed and directly impact these same students. Will the addition of a reading or information technology requirement extend the number of credits or semesters the student has to complete the requirement?

ASCC agrees that the time allowed to complete the requirements may need to be extended as additional requirements are approved.

General Education Registration Holds

The following general education holds are placed on student’s records. The only consequence to these students is that they are unable to process their registration using WebAdvisor. Registrations are manually processed by the designated office on each campus. The restriction placed on student registrations has a significant workload impact on campuses during a very busy time prior to and at the start of each semester to identify these students and make registration changes for them.

Gen Ed Requirements – Phase I CGEI

•Used for baccalaureate degree seeking students who have not completed 30 hoursof Board of Regents system general education requirements prior to thecompletion of 64 credit hours.

Gen Ed Requirements – Phase II CGE2

•Used for baccalaureate degree seeking students who have not completed 18 hoursof Board of Regents system general education requirements (3 credits in eachGoal) prior to the completion of their first 48 credit hours.

Gen Ed Requirements – CGET

•Used for baccalaureate degree seeking transfer students who transfer with 18 ormore credits and have not completed 18 hours of Board of Regents systemgeneral education requirements (3 credits in each Goal) prior to the completionof their first 48 Regental credit hours.

1. We suggest that registration holds not be put on students who have not met the general education requirements. Instead the lists generated for these holds could be used to track and communicate with students and advisors.

ASCC believes we would need a policy change to eliminate the registration holds, as the holds are enforcing BOR policy.

Workload Issues

Because the process for identifying pre general education and general education holds is not entirely automated and requires campus personnel to review the lists for student exceptions and program exceptions, this has caused in a workload issue for the registration offices on all campuses. Students with these holds can not make changes, such as switching sections of a class, to their schedule online – a person must do it. We hope the suggestions we made for changes to the process will help with the workload issue.

It is a manual process to review the restriction lists to allow for student and program exceptions, and it is a manual process to make schedule changes for these students in the registration offices. Since universities would probably review the lists anyway, the largest workload issue appears to be the manual intervention for registration changes. If we do not enforce the requirements with restrictions, we are putting more responsibility on the students and their advisors when they set up a student’s schedule.

Retention Concerns

Do the General Education and Pre General Education restrictions have a negative impact on retention for the system? Has implementation of this policy provided the expected outcome?

Proficiency exam failure affects retention and graduation rates also. We think one of the unexpected results of this policy is that by the time students are able to visit a registration office to make a change to their schedule, the section they wanted to register in is closed. This could be causing disgruntled students. Has anyone considered that perhaps we need more sections for Gen Ed courses?

Thank you for considering our changes to the processing and welcome your input.