Setup Considerations: Academic Requirements

What It Is

Academic requirements enable both students and advisors to track academic progress and degree completion results. Academic requirements are requirements that students need to complete to earn their degree or educational objective. Workday enables you to create academic requirements, including course registrations, activities, accomplishments, transfer credits, and tests. You can then use these academic requirements for academic requirement configurations.

Business Benefits

You can create academic requirements for specific educational objectives. Workday enables you to configure these academic requirements for general requirements or program-specific requirements. Academic requirements configurations can be as broad or as granular as required by your institution.

Academic requirements in Workday provide flexibility by enabling you to:

Create and reuse them in academic requirements configurations that you can use for academic unit-level combinations or for programs of study. Example: General requirements for the institutional undergraduate level or an honors program in Biology.

Categorize academic requirements by creating academic requirement groups. Example: General requirements for a Major or Minor.

Create total academic requirements, when configuring academic requirements, representing the total number of units a student must fulfill to complete their program of study.

Create academic requirement configurations for an academic unit, program of study, or program area that are for different effective dates. Workday assigns the appropriate set of requirements to students enrolling in the applicable academic unit or program of study on or after the requirements effective date.

Create academic requirements overrides for students to accommodate special circumstances or exceptions to help ensure student success.

Use Cases

Configure requirements that all students associated with an academic unit need to satisfy.

Example: Configure institutional academic requirements for all undergraduate students, irrespective of their program of study, consisting of 1 course each in:

Humanities.

Oral communication.

Written communication.

Configure requirements that students need to satisfy for a program of study. These requirements include the inherited requirements from the superior academic unit and level combination as well as individual program requirements.

Example: Configure academic requirements for Economics majors in addition to undergraduate requirements, consisting of:

All Economics Major Core Courses.

Any 4 courses from Economics Major Electives.

30 Units of Electives.

A grade average for a minimum number of specific courses.

Questions to Consider

Questions	Considerations
At what node of your academic structure do you want to configure or create academic requirements?	You can configure academic requirements for the academic unit and level, or for a program of study or program area. Academic units and programs of study both inherit requirements from the institution. You can configure additional requirements for the academic units and programs of study under an institution. When you configure academic requirements for a program of study, you can also configure specifically for a program focus or area. You can configure general requirements for an academic unit and level and specific requirements for programs of study. Example: Configure 32 General Elective Units as a requirement for Alma Mater University Undergraduate. This requirement is for all undergraduate levels at Alma Mater University, irrespective of Program of Study. For the Economics Undergraduate Program, you can additionally configure specific courses for Economics Major and Minor requirements. For the College of Science under Alma Mater University, which inherits the 32 General Elective Units, you can additionally configure 20 Units of In-Residence courses. Nonstandalone programs of study don't inherit academic requirements. Example: An auxiliary study abroad program. See Set Up Academic Requirement Configurations.
Do you need to use existing effective dates when you add academic requirements to academic requirement configurations or create new ones?	Each academic requirement for an academic unit and level or program of study has a requirements effective date that drives its configuration. When configuring academic requirements, you have the option to update an existing effective-dated configuration or create a new configuration. Example: You create a new effective dated requirements configuration for General Electives if you’ve added a new test requirement for Fall 2024 that doesn’t apply to current students. You update an existing effective dated requirements configuration for a new General Electives requirement for all students that the requirements apply to. The effective dates for the academic requirements and configuration must be on or before the effective date you select for the student. We use the Requirements Effective Date of the student to determine the version of the requirement which effective date of the requirements configuration to assign to the student. Example: If the student's Requirements Effective Date is 08/01/2022 (based on the Declare Date ), we use 08/01/2022 to determine which requirement configuration to use.
What effective date do you want to use to evaluate academic requirements for the student?	Do you want a student's academic progress evaluated based on the student's Matriculation Date (the record start date) or by the Declare Date of an individual program of study? Example: When you configure academic requirements for an Economics Major Program of Study with an effective date of 01/01/2020, Workday applies these requirements to all students who register for the program on or after 01/01/2020. You can also override the requirements effective date for a specific student on the student's profile. See Override Academic Requirements Effective Date.
What is the purpose of the academic requirement that you're trying to create? Who will have the access to create and edit eligibility rules in your institution?	You create academic requirements using Workday-delivered eligibility rules. Example: Course requirement, Grade requirement, Unit requirement, and so on. Workday enables you to configure Student Eligibility Rules by academic unit and, optionally, level. See Reference: Eligibility Rules for Academic Requirements. You can also combine rules. Example: You can create a unit rule for meeting a specified number of units for an academic level or program of study. You can include courses within this unit rule. Or, you can create a grade average rule for grade averages across courses. You can use the grade average rule for a minimum number of courses. Before creating eligibility rules, consider: What is the purpose of the rule? Are you using the correct rule type, qualifier, selector, and so on? Eligibility Rules is a powerful feature in Workday Student. Grant the ability to create and modify eligibility rules accordingly.
Do you want to configure total academic requirements for the program or academic unit and level?	You have the option of configuring academic requirements for the overall program that's distinct from the defined academic requirements. Example: All students in the program or academic unit and level have to earn a total of 120 credits. When configuring academic requirements, you have the option to exclude a total academic requirement from a student's plan.
Do you want to include the academic requirement on the student's plan?	By default, Workday includes the requirement on the student's academic plan, but you have the option to exclude requirements. Example: A test requirement or a competency doesn't need to be on the academic plan.
Do you want to assign additional conditions or student criteria to academic requirements?	When you configure academic requirements, you can assign academic requirements for students who meet certain criteria. You can assign these student criteria to the registrations nested in requirements rules: Athletic Team. Program of Study. Student Cohort. Test Achievement. Before assigning a condition, you must first create an eligibility rule using 1 of these rule types: athletic team, program of study, student cohort, and test achievement. You can also assign a criteria to all students in the program and not just a subset.
Do you plan to use overrides for academic requirements for managing exceptions?	Workday provides the flexibility to override academic requirements, including the configured academic progress limits. There are various types of overrides to manage a student's progress. You can override a student's academic requirements by adjusting the required course count, adjusting the total units, adding a course, or waiving a requirement. Example: A student already meets the required total units for a program if you add a work study program that's not on their academic plan. To help the student complete the program, you can lower the student's required total units. Managing academic requirements overrides is a powerful feature in Workday Student. Consider: Who can create or edit overrides? Who will approve an override or rescind an override? See Override Academic Requirements for Student and Override Total Academic Requirements for Student.

Recommendations

First, configure general requirements for the institution, then configure requirements for each subsequent level so that every level inherits requirements from the level above. When you first configure requirements for an institution, the programs of study you configure afterward inherit those requirements. If you configure requirements for a program of study first, the institution or the owning academic unit doesn't inherit the requirements. Configure at the right node. Nonstandalone programs of study don't inherit academic requirements. Example: An auxiliary study abroad program.

Know the purpose of what you're trying to achieve before creating an eligibility rule for an academic requirement. Some eligibility rules are specifically for academic requirements. Don't mix and match rules. Example: Don't use a rule that's for academic requirements as a rule for registration.

Use combination rules sparingly. To avoid confusion and errors, be clear and use caution when creating them. Instead of stacking combination rules into a single rule, create separate rules using the different rule types.

Use the custom meaning option when configuring eligibility rules. Workday displays your custom text instead of automatically generating the meaning of an eligibility rule.

Give access to create and edit academic requirements to only a small subset of advisors or administrators. Split the access to launch and view academic progress from the ability to create and edit academic requirements.

Use thoughtful and intuitive names for academic requirements to reduce confusion among students and administrators. Both students and administrators view requirements. In addition to potential scalability and maintenance issues, naming conventions can play a big part in the student experience. Example: A long academic requirement name takes up more space in the Academic Progress report grid. However, names should be intuitive too. See Reference: Academic Requirements Naming Conventions.

Verify that the Effective Date of the requirement is on or before the effective date of the program for the student to ensure that Workday assigns the correct set of requirements to the student. The effective dates for the academic requirements and configuration must be on or before the effective date you select for the student.

Requirements

Configure a calendar policy with an effective date on or before the effective date for your academic requirements. Your calendar policy configuration defines academic calendars, typical attendance patterns, and student unit types. Workday uses these components along with program requirements to evaluate academic progress. See Set Up Academic Calendar Policies.

Limitations

No impact.

Tenant Setup

No impact.

Security

Configure these domains in the Academic Advising functional area:

Domain	Considerations
Manage: Academic Requirements	Enables advisors and administrators to: Create, edit, and view academic requirements. Create, edit, and view academic requirement groups. Edit and view academic requirement versions. Launch the academic progress evaluation and view the progress report. View program of study and total academic requirement assignments.
Manage: Launch Academic Progress Evaluation	Enables advisors and administrators to launch and view academic progress without the ability to create and edit academic requirements.
Reports: Academic Requirements	Enables advisors and administrators to view these Workday-delivered reports: Find Academic Requirement Definitions Find Academic Requirement Groups View Academic Progress by Groups
Set Up: Academic Requirements	Enables advisors and administrators to configure academic requirements, including: Academic progress processing policies. Academic progress display options. Academic progress override reasons. Also enables advisors and administrators to view: Academic progress display. Academic progress policy snapshots. Academic requirement areas. Total academic requirements.
Set Up: Academic Requirements Configurations	Enables advisors and administrators to manage academic requirements, including: Configure and view academic requirements configurations. Create, edit, and view restricted requirement groups.

Business Processes

The Academic Requirement Override Event
business process enables you to configure the business process security policy for managing overrides.

Reporting

Report	Considerations
Academic Unit Policy Viewer	Enables you to view all current and past versions of an academic policy for a program of study or academic unit and level configuration.
Find Academic Requirements Definitions	Enables you to view information for all the academic requirements or filter by academic unit, academic levels, eligibility rule types, and effective date.
Find Student Eligibility Rules	Enables you to view all student eligibility rules, or filter by rule type, academic unit, and academic level.
View Academic Requirements	Enables you to view more information about a selected academic requirement, including the node configured for and version information.
View Academic Requirement Configurations	Enables you to view the effective-dated academic requirement configurations by academic unit and level, program of study, or program area.

Integrations

Web Service	Considerations
Get Academic Requirement Assignments	Enables you to retrieve all academic requirement assignments for a specific program of study.
Put Academic Requirement Assignment	Enables you to create or update an academic requirement assignment.

Connections and Touchpoints

Workday offers a Touchpoints Kit with resources to help you understand configuration relationships in your tenant. Learn more about the Workday Touchpoints Kit on Workday Community.

Features	Considerations
Academic Foundation	The calendar policy of the academic unit has an impact on the academic requirements configured for the academic unit.
Curriculum	Courses and educational offerings impact the setup of academic requirements.
Financial Aid	Financial aid attendance plans drive load status and units for class standing.

Other Impacts

No impact.