Course Applicability System (CAS)

The Course Applicability System (CAS) takes higher education institutions to a new level in student services. CAS provides the ability to publish Course Equivalency Guides, Academic Programs, Courses Offered, Transfer Course Evaluations and Degree Audit Reporting in a web environment. CAS was developed by Miami University (Oxford, Ohio), the developer of DARS (Degree Audit Reporting System) that is utilized by the U of M and MnSCU.

• A student-driven web access to transfer articulation and degree audit information
• Based on self-reporting of courses by prospective transfer students
• Reported information created by existing degree audit and transfer articulation tables
• New universal access provided via the internet and a web browser

• Provide potential transfer students with direct access to information
• Provide a storage vehicle to hold the student’s complete academic portfolio
• Evaluate portfolio for acceptability/equivalency
• Evaluate portfolio for applicability

• Track communication leading to inter-university/college course acceptability, equivalency and applicability
• Provide direct public access for casual inquiry

Students contemplating a transfer may submit their coursework to any institution within the CAS network for evaluation against that institution’s academic programs. CAS provides this information via a distributed WEB based application utilizing multiple-servers, multiple-databases, and commercial-grade application software. CAS enables institutions that wish to develop a higher profile for use in the recruitment and retention of students.

CAS has received state support from the legislature and the Regents in Arizona and Ohio for public institutions with plans to add private colleges. Wisconsin has now joined CAS: River Falls is the pilot site and Superior is developing the EDI interface for CAS. Minnesota has purchased the CAS software and is beginning implementation. Other states indicating interest - California, Nevada, Massachusetts, Washington, Utah and Kentucky.

In Minnesota, CAS is a cooperative venture of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) and the University of Minnesota (U of M).  The Minnesota Virtual University (MnVU) funds CAS.  A CAS Work Group from MnSCU and the U of M has been meetings since May 1999 to make CAS a reality in Minnesota.

Institutions must have DARS Transfer Articulation tables in place for CAS to work.  MnSCU began DARS implementation on October 1999.  All MnSCU institutions are expected to be using DARS by June 30, 2001.  The University of  Minnesota has been a DARS client since 1989.

Student data, academic history and transfer courses are all fed into the DARS "engine" from the student record.  Along with basic institutional rules, each college or university enters into DARS the encoding that will define each of their academic programs or majors as well as the transfer articulation rules.  These transfer articulation rules define for DARS exactly how to take in transfer coursework and then how to apply it toward meeting the defined requirements at the receiving institution.

When a student uses CAS and enters their academic portfolio, CAS will interface with DARS in order to report to that student how their portfolio of courses will transfer to another participating institution.  Setting up Transfer Articulation in DARS is a step that each institution must complete in order to enable CAS to function for current and prospective students.

• More states will join multi-state network
• EDI-enabled processing of transfer work (would not need to be self-reported)
• Interface with non-DARS degree audits
• Method/process for updating replicated data across CAS Servers
• Graphic interface to degree audit results