Guide is the official source of general policy and curricular information. The degree audit (DARS) is the official audit of a student’s progress in an L&S undergraduate degree, major, or certificate program. Guide provides a general description of programs and courses but does not assume anything about an individual student’s academic record. DARS uses an individual student’s record to compile that student’s program requirements and reports how a student can and has satisfied each component of their degree. These two systems work in concert to provide general curricular information (Guide) and specific information grounded in students’ individual contexts (DARS).
How Guide informs the Degree Audit (DARS)
The expression of undergraduate program requirements in Guide informs the production of DARS. In its responsibility for DARS production oversight, AIM analyzes Lumen Programs proposals and updates to College requirements for accuracy and to ensure the requirements can be encoded in DARS. This analysis supports ongoing alignment between these two sources of information.
How Guide and the Degree Audit may differ (Guide ≈≈ DARS)
Because Guide is a general description and the degree audit is student-specific, there are nuances that are worth mentioning:
- Because a new edition of Guide is published in full each academic year, it cannot assemble iterations of requirements based on L&S Catalog Year policies. Since DARS reads the dates of matriculation and program declaration from a student’s record, it assembles the correct iterations of requirements when auditing that student and may report requirements from different Guide editions.
- DARS will apply approved exceptions for an individual student; courses that are no longer taught (but which were approved to meet requirements at the time); and test, transfer, and high school units to meet some requirements.
- DARS applies L&S course repeat, pass/fail, and minimum grade/GPA policies that may appear to result in a DARS that does not perfectly align with Guide. These complexities are documented in governance materials and many are explained in the L&S Policies & Regulations and Requirements sections of Guide.
Catalog Years
A student’s degree requirements are established according to student-specific academic milestones. These are referred to as “catalog year” policies. Each School and College at UW–Madison may have different catalog year policies. In L&S catalog year policies determine the requirements of the degree in effect for each student:
- University General Education Requirements (UGER): Year and term of first matriculation to any accredited institution of higher learning, after graduating from secondary school.
- L&S degree requirements: Year and term of first matriculation to any accredited institution of higher learning, after graduating from secondary school.
- L&S major/certificate requirements: Year and term of program declaration.
An L&S student may have more than one catalog year and may have different catalog years for each declared major or certificate. Because L&S students’ catalog rights are determined by catalog year policy, the current version of Guide may not reflect the requirements in effect for a student. The degree audit (DARS) applies all catalog year policies relevant to a student automatically.
Alternative Sources of Academic Information
Guide is the official source for all curriculum information related to L&S degrees, majors, and certificates at UW–Madison. It also serves as the basis for the degree audits in DARS. Refer to Displaying Guide Content on University Websites (UW-1092) regarding publication of any academic program, course, or curricular information on university websites.