How often do colleges pull this stunt:

1. daughter was told by her advisor all she needed for her graduate degree was her thesis. Once her thesis was handed in, she was told "whoopsie, the registrar says you need another course to qualify"

2. son checked his transcript on the university's automatic web site and it indicated that he had every credit he needed to graduate. It turned out that the department had changed the requirements without updating the automatic web site, so he needs to take one more course.

In both cases, the information is available on the college web site, but you have to follow through hyper-links to get to the page with the information you need. You have no way of knowing that although it says this on this page, it says that on that page because you have no indication that that page even exists! In my son's case, two pages have two different sets of requirements!

...wouldn't someone have track of that stuff on their own? Particularly a Master's student? With my PhD, I knew where I was every moment of every day.

The information that applied to her case was posted on a separate page from the other requirements, but there was nothing to indicate that any additional requirements applied.

My son and I went over his DARS Report (Degree Audit Reporting System) together and thought he had all his bases covered. Like I said, the requirements were changed, but no one updated the program to reflect the changes. I just checked his DARS again, and according to it, he will have more credits than he needs when he finishes the semester in 3 weeks. In reality, he's taking a summer course to graduate in the fall.

If so, you should call the registrar. CSU students are generally held to the course requirements for their major as published in the catalog during the year they matriculated. I deal with that question several times a semester with my own undergrad advisees. If changes are made later, they do not affect students who matriculated earlier-- everyone is responsible for the requirements in effect during their "catalog year" only.

That's the way it is at the CSU campus where I teach, and I believe that's the policy system-wide.

Everything is on different web sites, and if you miss a site or fail to click a link, you won't know you're missing information until you hit a wall.

...unless the acronym DARS is more widespread than I thought!

Anyway, all universities have a catalog-- whether it's printed or not. The online catalog is still the course catalog. I really recommend that you talk to the registrar.

and it looks to me like he has all his bases covered, but he insists that he's been told he needs one more course.

It'd be a real hoot if in August someone looks it over and says "whoopsie, you were all set last May after all!"

An advisor who knows what he would need or not?

as to whether you can rely on an adviser or the catalog. Apparently, each campus has a troll hidden away somewhere who is the final arbiter and it is the student's responsibility to identify and locate said troll!

I hope that it all works out for him and he can graduate with his class. It sucks that it's so complicated.

Back in college I graduated a semester late, but I was perfectly aware that I would be doing so.

How about... hey, kid, you're so good at chemistry that the association is going to give you a prize! This will all but guarantee your acceptance into Cal Tech! Yippee... 'cept now your folks need to write a check for $30k for the first year... and there are no scholarships in this area for geniuses like you, so yeah, your folks will have to cut a check... never mind that there are two other kids heading for college, a mortgage, food... etc... never mind you're tops!

I hate the whole system. I really do.

meaning, if you started the program prior to the changes, you would graduate as long as you completed the courses required when you started. Hope that makes sense. Both of your kids should try to speak to a knowledgeable advisor...

I know that in the lower divisions, students are generally awarded catalog rights based on their year of enrollment. If the requirements change while they're attending, the student has the choice of switching to the new requirements or remaining on the old.

Graduate requirements can change at any time, but in practice we give students a year to graduate under the previous program of study. More than a year and we figure there is time to adjust.

In most states some programs - nursing and teaching come to mine - the state can change the graduation requirements and even previously enrolled students are affected. OTOH, my program was grandfathered in when there were changes to the required classes.

Students at the California State University are responsible for the course work in the catalog for their major during the year they matriculated. Subsequent changes only affect later students.

It happened to me. To add insult to injury after I completed the additional course work "they" required .... "they" later informed me "We made a mistake ... you could have graduated last semester"

I had no choice but to take it in stride (at the end of the day what recourse did I have?)

My advice? Have her adviser go through all of her credits, course by course with the program director ... the summaries are often compiled by admin folk that may be in a hurry and may not recognize equivalent course work.

Your daughter's graduate committee should have signed off on everything during her graduate committee well before she completed her thesis. If there's paperwork on file with their approval without that extra course, she's got grounds for petitioning.

Your son (undergrad?) is probably out of luck. In most professional modern schools, they'll usually grandfather kids in with this sort of thing, but not always.

What sort of school is this?

are two hours long. Somebody goofed and scheduled a 2-D design course for one hour and nobody knew until half my class got ready to leave before I had a chance to get really boring.

My advisor never told me I needed to take certain courses in order to complete my English major. They were basic courses of second tier stuff. I was already taking third and fourth year stuff when the mistake was discovered. There was no way, with about 2 weeks till graduation, I was going to be able to take the 2 courses I missed. It wasn't like I was trying to avoid them, hell I took 2 semesters of Shakespeare! They authorized an exemption in my case. I had the credits, but did not take the "basic" classes. Whoopsie!

Its rough when requirements change as in case number 2 or there is contradictory information.

A student in a graduate program should have an approved plan of study. Once meeting its requirements, there should be no more.

An undergraduate student should be governed by the catalog s/he came in under, not by subsequent changes in requirements.

And a university website should reflect such things.

But ultimately a faculty member or other adviser should be responsible for making sure everything is copacetic.

consistent and in one place, then it's up to the student. When the info is scattered, contradictory and/or hidden, it's rather self serving of the university to use phrases like "student responsibility" and "real life".

I just realized that some of the posters who feel it's the student's responsibility also believe that teacher/advisers don't have time to become familiar with the program requirements. If the teacher/advisers don't know what the program requires, how can they be certain the program requires enough?

Just part and parcel of academia.

I'm sorry it's caught both your kids, but it happens so much that I'm a bit surprised they weren't aware (even through the student grapevine) that it was an issue. Sounds like your daughter made the fatal error of trusting her advisor - always check with the Grad College; faculty advisors' are rarely trained or even interested in that sort of thing. I don't quite understand why your son would check his transcript rather than talking to the department . . .

If he's in a field with licensing requirements (health/psych/education/etc) then requirements can and do change and grandfather clauses rarely hold true.

my daughter trusted the people in her department, and they weren't up on university regs. My son, not trusting advisors, tried to figure things out on his own.

As noted by someone else above, most colleges do advising on the cheap by telling the students to get a teacher to be their advisor. The teachers aren't trained, aren't up to speed on the latest regs, and have other priorities. In my experience, students who are dedicated to their studies tend to try to work out any problems themselves rather than consulting someone else. The advisors expect the kids to come to them when they have a problem, but the kids don't go because they feel they can and should fix the problem themselves.

on a variety of levels. I appreciate what you're saying and don't disagree. Most schools do have 'college' (as in 'College of Education' or 'College of Social Sciences') advising sections for undergrads, though - particularly uni's - and uni's should have a 'Graduate College' as well. Not saying that your kids' school has them, but they might want to check . . .

It's actually better to have a faculty advisor for many things - but figuring out the ins and outs of degree requirements is probably not one of them, especially at the undergraduate level. Most departments that use faculty advisors make it part of the job requirement, but don't offer any particular training in how to do it - add to that the fact that a lot of academics would rather pull their own teeth than advise and it's a perfect storm just waiting to happen. I kind of like doing it, myself - but I'm not forced to it or assigned students so that makes it my choice.

I'm sorry your kids' have had to learn all this the hard way - it's no fun. It is part of growing up to realize and accept that we can't figure it all out by ourselves all the time; it's unfortunate that we tend to reach that point AFTER we've completed our educations.

My sympathies.

in 1976.

In my case the administration designated an all encompassing course when I transferred in as partial credit towards Freshman English. No matter that I had high enough scores to not be required to take Freshman English, since they had counted some of the credits from the Core Program Course towards it I had to "complete the Freshman English series." So in my last semester I had to take one Freshman English class.:wtf:

The bright side was that the other classes I took to have a full class load upped my Anthropology minor to a major so I graduated with a double major and no minor - if I had gone another semester, I could have gotten a Geology minor.

I had been told that a Math minor was okay for my major (even though I would earn a B.A. in Psychology). Then, come one semester before graduation, when I went in to fill out some sort of "I'm about to graduate" form, they said the policy had changed, and Math was only an acceptable minor for a B.S. degree. ("BS" is pretty much what I said when they told me that.) On the other hand, I needed only a few more classes in English to complete a second major in that. Then, at the end of that semester, I got a for letter from the Registrar's office informing me that I was four hours short of graduation. We argued for a couple of weeks, and then I remembered a class I had taken at the local college while I was in high school. They accepted 2 of those 3 hours, leaving me two hours short.

I thought that was pretty amazing, since I'd spent two years of college in a full-time touring rock n roll band, but that's another story.

I signed up for one more class--woodworking--I would have taken basketweaving, but they didn't offer it that term--and graduated a semester late. If I'd taken a full course load, I could have switched my Psych major to a B.S. and used the Math minor, but c'est la vie.

When I transferred, as an art student, from George Mason University to the University of Utah, I was prepared to accept the possibility that not all of my credits would transfer. But when I got to the U of U and they told me that I'd have to start with foundation (drawing circles and squares and triangles, are you kidding me????) all over again, I freaked. My portfolio showed advanced, even "gifted" (according to one instructor) drawing and painting ability and they wanted to start me as if I had no idea how to handle 3d with a pencil. What bullshit.

I had to take a fight all the way to the Dean of the Art School to get them to reconsider and finally succeeded in getting them to accept all but a couple of my credits and I didnt have to start with Foundation. It came with a price, though - the administrator who first tried to gouge my credits took it so personally that she lost, that she told me I was not welcome in any of her classes (she taught an art history unit I had to fill).

Of course it shouldn't be a mystery as to why they love to make you do all your cour$$$$$e work over again given half a chance....

courses which list the equivalent course and what credit would be granted. They also have some pretty developed 2+2 programs with community colleges that seem to be pretty good. Of course Chem I and II is pretty much the same everyplace, I don't know about art/graphic design classes.

I'm sure they don't have the same consistency as the sciences.

I've had a dozen or so grad students over the years, and I'm all too familiar with the first problem. Grad advisers are research advisers-- thesis advisers-- and only rarely stay in close touch with the academic hoops students have to jump through, especially if they're not having academic problems. I generally make it clear to my grad students that I'm NOT authorized to give them a diploma, and that I don't micromanage their academic studies. My primary concern is their scientific progress, and their research and thesis. The department graduate coordinator and grad staff, the office of grad studies and research, and the registrar's office all exist to help with programmatic matters-- the adviser's job is to oversee the thesis research, chair the grad committee, help with research and analysis, edit the thesis, etc.

Like I said, it's important for advisers to tell grad students that they're generally NOT the go-to persons for general academic questions.

the academic adviser. You didn't build the system, so I don't mean to blame you, especially since it sounds like you alert your students to the pitfalls. I just wish that the information you laid out here was printed in bold letters on the web site!

They aren't auditors. It's the student's responsibility to keep track of credits, etc. Faculty have many responsibilities, and I would bet that it isn't even officially part of their job to count credits. That is why part of the tuition you're paying goes to staff.

Most programs allow grandparenting-in of requirements in place at the time of admission, with exceptions that others on this thread have pointed out. He should double check this with the staff dean of his/her program - not with faculty, whose primary job is to teach and do research, not service. Even if the requirements didn't change, it's possible that websites don't function perfectly, and your son should have checked everything against the paper version of the requirements he was given at the time of entry.

I'm sorry that you've run into problems with both kids' schools, but hope that they will take more responsibility going forward.

the requirements, 2. he thought he was being responsible, and 3. the role of adviser as described by you and others is not the role of adviser as understood by many students.

Students don't know all the details but they do understand what staff are paid to do.

Somewhere there is an OFFICIAL listing of university requirements - if it is not the website (which you say it is not, since they aren't honoring its results), then it is either on paper on in some other form somewhere else. Unless he is at a fly-by-night university, this exists.

You've been told this in various ways by several people with experience who are saying the same thing, and in addition I gave you another suggestion about your son's needing to check with a dean about whether he is grandparented in. Instead of fighting with people here, you need to hear what they are saying and change your approach. As I said earlier, I'm sorry you have run into problems, but you are not taking the best approach to identify the sources of the problems and solve them.

I had the academic catalog from the first year I started school, and that is the program I was on. It showed all of the courses and requirements I needed. Any changes made annually to the degree program only affected students starting that year. It did not retroactively change the requirements of any current students. I kept track of my progress and only went to my adviser to tell him what I was planning on doing. I didn't rely on him to actually give me any advice.

neither did my husband. What we did have was a paper catalog that listed the requirements Chinese menu style; you must have all the courses in column A, three from column B, four in sequence from column c, etc. Now that my kids are in school, everything is paperless. The listing on the Web site is done in a terrible fashion; I had to sit down to create an Excel spread sheet and go through it three times to make any sense out of it.

I was mandated to meet with the fellow, so I did. Ultimately our meetings were was a waste of my time.

I'm amazed there isn't a hard copy of the catalog. Paper is such a good thing when you're relying on that same "menu" for the next four years or so. Electronic stuff can float away too easily if the school isn't careful enough, which seems to be most schools.

My transcript says I graduated in Aug when last class was done in May.

It is very frustrating and good luck to them.

I ended up taking a *certain* class three times: once by itself at my old college (and it was taught there again bundled with other courses I had to take), and finally again on it's own at my second college (where it was part of a curriculum in another dept). The third time I could test myself on the subject matter without studying. I had objected when I was transferring and while my advisor admitted that the class was the same I had to repeat it anyway.

was told all along that I'd taken the requisite math & science courses, only to get up to graduation review & be told "whoopsie, why didn't you take Algebra?" Because you always said I didn't need it, duh. And since the classes filled up in the summer sessions, it was another year before I graduated.

dg

the world of academics nobody works their fingers to the bone.

that just when the hero and heroine kill the last monster and are relaxing and giving each other a hug,

another monster is at the window with an ax!

I don't know which side your children are on, but any student who isn't paying scrupulous attention, EVERY semester, as to what classes they are taking versus what they will need, and just how many credits they've actually earned versus what they need to earn, is a student that maybe needs to stick around another semester or two.

But we're in the age of do-everything-for-the-kids, so maybe it's no longer expected that students take charge of making sure they are doing what they need to do.

But then, I graduated on-time for my degrees and with each one earned a bunch more credits than I needed, so perhaps I'm just some elitist over-achieving non-progressive who should shut the fuck up.

up her Freshman year. She got the advice to take all of her General Elective courses first from her college "advisor" (or better described as a scheduler). I was in shocked amazement. Fortunately it did no lasting damage as she rectified the situation to her schedule after we looked over the requirements.

Critical Path is an important concept for scheduling classes. You must know your Critical Path and stick with it. It is also essential if you are thinking of finishing up in less than four years (for my daughters it means taking Chem I and II while still in High School with the possibility of also taking Organic Chemistry I and II which could reduce the Critical Path time by up to two years).

I am surprised most universities that I have been associated with have automatic online degree evaluations which list all the required courses and which courses you have taken which fulfill certain requirements. Also our state schools all have a four year guarantee plan for most majors (Science, Math, Engineering etc - not so sure about Education or Teaching Certifications though - they may take longer with the Student Teaching).

and yes, to think that a college would make it impossible for a student to know where they stand course-wise and what the requirements are for their degree is insane.

Maybe one of those sheister on-line colleges, or some non-accredited shithole, but not a legitimate college.

regarding not going five years to college. A bunch of reforms have taken place, and several of the plans of study clearly show critical path classes now. In fact with the High School Post Secondary Enrollment Options and general (but not complete) acceptance of AP courses, a four year degree can be completed in three years (especially with strategic courses taken during the summer).

I still don't understand what was going on with my wife. I got a flow chart when I started Mechanical Engineering at Purdue that showed all courses with sequences that needed to be followed. It was clear where you needed to be when. My wife's major was Fashion Merchandising/Promotion - guess they are not quite so analytical (or anal).

in Bureaucracy.

I hope everything gets sorted out!

Did he retain a copy of the original cataloged requirements?

...without actual notice of change to individual students.

In practice, we give students in my department about a year to graduate under the previous program of study and then take things on a case by case basis. If the changes or new information are really a problem for the OP, then they can appeal administratively. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

the handbook for my program (hard copy), and they told me to keep it because I could use it later if they change things to say "This is what is required for my degree."

Of course they may just say they have the right to change it whenever they want, but they shouldn't. So if he has his handbook he should be able to use that against them. He can tell them they can require new students to take this extra course but when he started this class was not part of the agreement.

They have a print out of what classes you've taken and what you need to graduate. My advisor gave me suggestions about classes to take this term, but I have just a printout of exactly what I need and I check that when I was registering for classes.

and happy feelings of parents.

And yet, it is probably the least important behavior in terms of tenure and promotion (as long as one can say they did their part).

At one point there was a concerted effort to get quality of advisement listed in t&p documents, but it faded away when we stopped getting raises.